Love and Other Headaches
by Kala Lane-Kent
Summary: The continuing adventures of the Lane-Kent family, in the years that span between 'Heirs' and the forthcoming 'Blood Will Tell'. The journey toward destiny is never an easy one, but the road is rarely dull. Especially when you're in this family.
1. With One Foot In Front of the Other

God, I've missed these guys so much. I didn't even realize how much until we started this chapter. We had several false starts, so many ideas where to open it, but none felt right. This is what finally fit. Don't worry if you're confused on the details. The upcoming chapters will fill in the missing years here. I hope that everyone enjoys what's coming. This is it. This is the lead-in to the new epic. And with this, Anissa and I are one step closer to opening this universe to its future and _**Blood Will Tell**_.

So many tales yet to tell...

* * *

><p><em>For those days we felt like a mistake,<em>  
><em> Those times when love's what you hate<em>  
><em> Somehow<em>  
><em> We keep marchin on<em>

_ For those nights that I couldn't be there,_  
><em> I've made it harder to know that you know<em>  
><em> That somehow<em>  
><em> We'll keep movin on<em>

_ There's so many wars we fought_  
><em> There's so many things we're not<em>  
><em> But with what we have<em>  
><em> I promise you that<em>  
><em> We're marchin on<em>  
><em> We're marchin on<em>

_ For all of the plans we've made_  
><em> There isn't a flag I'd wave<em>  
><em> Don't care where we've been<em>  
><em> I'd sink us to swim<em>  
><em> We're marchin on<em>  
><em> We're marchin on<em>

_ For those doubts that swirl all around us_  
><em> For those lives that tear at the seams<em>  
><em> We know<em>  
><em> We're not what we've seen...<em>

* * *

><p>"Goddamn Perry White, taking a week off," Lois growled under her breath. "It never fails. Betcha the old buzzard <em>knew<em> the shit was gonna hit the fan in Libya this week. Not to mention this fiasco with the courthouse. Sonofabitch, and he even tried to pull the frail old man bit…" She trailed off into semi-coherent mutterings, pawing through the detritus of papers on her desk in search of one particular note while she held a still-ringing phone to her ear. "This bastard better pick up. You do _not_ ignore a call from the _Daily Planet_. I'll come down there, so help me…"

"Lane!" Ames barked from the bullpen. "City Hall's on line two for ya!"

Swearing at the phone she held, Lois slammed it down, resolving to corner the uncooperative senator and put the fear of Mad Dog Lane into him. Then she picked up the City Hall line and answered with a smile, "Lane here, whaddya got for me?"

Over in International, Clark rested his chin in the palm of his hand, propped his elbow on his desk, and looked at his wife with adoration in his eyes. "God, I love her," he murmured.

Across from him, Ron Troupe grinned. "And everyone in town knows it, Clark. Me, I'm just glad I got the _nice_ sister."

"Lois is nice—when she wants to be." Both men shared a smile; Lois was called Hurricane Lane for a reason, and not just because her office looked like it had been hit by one. "Now, what was your hunch on Kazakhstan?"

They fell to talking business for a while. Ron was a keen reporter of Clark's mold, more a quiet and thorough observer than an avid confrontationist like Lois. He'd been keeping an eye on situations in Asia recently, and updated Clark on everything he'd learned and suspected. Once that was done, and a bit of personal chat as well, both men returned to their work. Clark had the International section to rough out by the end of the day, and at least now he had a nice fat story to stick on the front of it.

He was pleasantly occupied and only paying partial attention to the office, at least until he heard Lois' cell phone ring. Clark glanced at the clock and noticed it was half-past two. Sitting back in his chair, he kept a close eye—and ear—on his wife's office for _this_ call.

…

"Lois Lane, _Daily Planet_," she barked into the phone. The number on the caller ID was blocked so she added, "I dunno how you got this number, buddy, but you've got thirty seconds to make it worth my time."

"I have a story for you, Mrs. Lane-Kent," came the reply, a low masculine voice with more than a touch of humor in it.

She recognized that voice, even more recognized the name he called her by, and smiled. "Oh yeah? You and half the city, and most of 'em aren't news even in the _Petersbrook Picayune_. What's it to me? I am, you know, the assistant editor of the most influential newspaper in town." Glancing into Clark's office, she saw that he was smiling broadly. Lois stuck her tongue out at him; he had to be listening to this.

"I know, Mrs. Lane-Kent. But this story is worth your attention."

"So maybe it's worth printing," she admitted. "The tale of how you _got_ this number ought to be interesting enough. But why should I tend to it personally? I've got a bullpen full of eager young reporters who can come talk to you."

"No, Mrs. Lane-Kent, only you can do this story justice," the caller insisted.

"Yeah, right," she scoffed. "Gimme one good reason why."

"It's a superhero story."

"And this is supposed to make me stop in shock and awe? The _Daily Planet _isn't the only one covering them. Maybe you haven't been paying attention to the news, but we've got an entire _league_ of superheroes, plus the Titans. My guys can't cover them all these days."

"Yes, but this concerns _Superman_. He gave his permission to reveal this to you. And he made it clear that you're the reporter he trusts the most. Could you spare me the time?"

Of course he'd use that as his hook. No way could she deny that. Kal-El still did the occasional interview with other papers, but all of the exclusives still belonged to the _Planet, _and Metropolis' favorite son had made it clear, her current post didn't change the fact _she_ was his chronicler. "You're damn right he does. And you say the okay comes straight from the man himself?" She paused then, looking to anyone watching that she was deeply considering it before she let out an aggravated sigh. "All right, you've convinced me, kid. When do you want to set up a meet?"

"How about right now?" came the quick response. "I'm on your roof. And I brought coffee. Someone told me that you're always in need of coffee."

Lois narrowed her eyes. Clark, obviously eavesdropping throughout the conversation, was now grinning so cheesily that she wanted to throw something at him on principal. "I'll meet you there. Make sure to tell Superman he _owes_ me one. But this one had _better_ be worth it."

With that, she leveled the Lane Death Glare once more time at her husband through the glass walls that separated their offices before she stalked out, breezily telling Ames that she was off to see about a story. Up the elevator to the roof, and a cool breeze stirred her hair, which since she'd stopped dyeing it was the color of silver and steel. Waiting for her was a tall, powerfully built young man in a uniform of flame and black; the hero known to the world as Xenoblaze, and known around Lois' apartment as Jason—or Lizardboy, if his sister was in.

The reporter looked him over with a jaundiced eye, slamming a tight lid down on every iota of maternal instinct that tried to come to the surface. The whole family had discussed Jason going forward with the mission, including wearing the shield in public finally. Each time, they had all decided that it was just a little too soon since his debut shortly after he'd returned from his first training with the Bats the summer before his seventeenth birthday. Jason had continued on to train with several of the other families and was well on his way to being the hero he wanted so badly to be. And it had been a few years in this 'Xenoblaze' identity, one that Bruce's youngest had sprung on him without warning and which her boy had instantly loathed. Each time the crossover to the crest was mentioned, they'd convinced him to wait just a little longer, and her son had seemed to agree and had continued on under his current handle.

Now it sounded like she'd been outvoted in absentia. Somehow Lois wasn't quite surprised. If she were honest with herself, she'd been the main one dragging her feet. He was an adult now, over eighteen, but in her heart of hearts, those nervous blue eyes watching her stalk toward him were still topped with a mop of light brown hair and he was still toting around a lizard that weighed more than he did, grinning proudly. So many mixed emotions bound up in this. Lois had known that it was inevitable, they would eventually find themselves here, but it just seemed too soon sometimes. Then again, everything to do with her twins growing up seemed to happen too fast.

She took a mental deep breath then and pushed that all away. There wasn't time for it and she was setting a bad example. If Jason wanted to go forward this early, he needed to know the costs of opening himself up to the media. Up until now, he'd never actually spoken to anyone for the record. She had been the one to set Kal-El straight, she was the one that had already taught Kala how to avoid prying questions with damaging results in the event that she did make the Big Time. Now it was Jason's turn. Hopefully he could handle a couple of rounds with Mad Dog Lane. "All right, kid, whaddya got for me?"

He gave her a heartbroken look, but before the first syllable of 'Mom' could form on his lips she arched an eyebrow and glared. They could never, ever take the risk of anyone associating his two identities. It hurt them both, but there were already whispers in the news community about Xenoblaze's powers being suspiciously similar to another, more-established superhero. Link him to Lois, too, and the whole house of cards would come tumbling down. She hoped he knew what he was doing or they'd have to start over on his story for this new identity from the top.

As if Lois didn't suspect who was behind those whispers. Luthor was still out there, dangerous as ever, but he'd managed to keep a lid on what he knew for years. Lois privately suspected it was too powerful a secret for him to _ever_ reveal; he enjoyed gloating over Clark's true identity like a dragon perched upon a hoard it could never spend, only guard with avaricious glee. It would be just like him to plant suspicions in others' minds, drops of poison calculated to reach just the right ears.

Blaze—in circumstances like these Lois forced herself to think of him by his codename, so nothing incriminating could slip out—sighed like the teenager he was. Then he got down to business like the young man he was fast becoming. "Have some coffee, Mrs. Lane-Kent," he said.

She took the cup, smirked at him after she took a sip and realized that he had splashed out for what she considered her indulgence order at the coffee shop, and he continued without reaction, "I've asked you here because I have some information—some _exclusive_ information I'd like to share with you first."

"_Now_ you're speaking my language," Lois told him. "So lay it out, kiddo. What's the exclusive, or do I have to play twenty questions to get it out of you?"

Blaze took a moment, seeming to go over whatever speech he had planned in his head before sighing and nodding. "I spoke to Superman recently and I think he's right. I think it's time for the public to know the truth. And I can't think of anyone I trust more to do it," he replied a little anxiously. And then she knew the enormity of what he was telling her. This wasn't just a name change.

For a split second, Lois was startled, and the mother in her wanted to break character and ask her boy what the hell he was thinking. And then realization hit. _Oh, wait. Wait. They're going to let him…? I didn't know Kal-El was going to let him wear.… Not yet. Goddammit, you and your dad planned this one out, didn't you? Without consulting __**me **__for approval on__** that**__, who incidentally gave him __**his**__ name. _The look she cast him then was far from friendly._ Okay, fine, you wanna play games, I'm playing this to the hilt. You may as well learn how __**real**__ reporters interview sooner rather than later, __**Superboy**__._

Thus decided, she snorted derisively. "And you called up the _editor in chief_ of the _Daily Planet_ for this? Sounds like you should've taken out a classified ad instead. Forget it, kid, I'm out. Good coffee, though." With that she took a sip and turned on her heel, striding toward the elevator.

"But … hey, wait!" his flustered voice called after her. Lois ignored it, and the next second a strong breeze whipped her hair back from her face, and Blaze was in front of her. "He and I talked. I … I'm changing my name to Superboy," he blurted out.

Lois sipped the coffee, giving him her best jaded-journalist stare. "With Superman's permission, I hope? That name _is_ copyrighted, you know."

"Of course, with his permission," he said, sounding irritated now. "The real story is why."

Lois looked at her watch, sipped her coffee, and said, "Yeah, I was gonna ask that. He's the last of his kind. Planet blew up when he was a baby. He's been on his own all these years and there almost no chance that he has a baby-momma hidden away somewhere. Has to be a compelling story behind why you get to share the name, so I'll give you ten minutes to impress me. Go."

Blaze sighed in clear aggravation. "Are you this confrontational with him?" he asked, keeping his composure with effort.

She gave him no more ground than she did his father when they were at odds on an issue. If he wanted to do this, was convinced that he could handle what the news media would throw at him, he had to prove it to her here and now. "No, I'm worse. He's a grown man, you're a kid, so I'm going easy on you. Nine minutes, thirty seconds."

Lois had dealt with other young heroes, and some of them would've gotten testy and petulant at her dismissive behavior. Not Blaze. He shook himself slightly, re-settled his shoulders, and when he spoke again his voice was mild and calm. "I got the name Xenoblaze from Robin, when I was in training in Gotham City. I never felt like it was a good fit…"

She interrupted, "Reporter's tip: never lead with exposition. Nobody cares about backstory unless you hook 'em first. I know you've got some jaw-dropping shocker of a statement—spit it out."

His handsome blue eyes narrowed just a bit, and then he told her levelly, "I am a clone of Superman."

That did it. That broke some of her fury there and then. Lois raised one hand to silence him, covering her mouth with the other to stifle her snickering. _Oh my God, you __**are**__. You are so much your father's son it hurts._ At the break in character, he smiled, seeing his mom beneath her Mad Dog Lane façade. _Okay, so maybe he can do this. Don't let up, but maybe he can manage._ She took a deep breath and got herself back into reporter-mode, taking out her digital recorder. "Okay, okay, the hero we've known for the last few years as Xenoblaze is actually Superboy, a clone of Superman. Gotcha. I know sheep and bulls and dogs have been cloned, but _people_? Since when is the tech that good? And you're, what, eighteen? Twenty? The tech was that good twenty years ago to clone a sentient species?"

"I'm not as old as I look. My growth was accelerated," he retorted with a very Lane scowl.

"Oh really? So does that mean your lifespan is shortened, or your accelerated growth just stopped right when it needed to?" she fired right back at him.

Now he was getting into the rhythm of it, his answers delivered with the same speed and verve as her questions. "My lifespan should be normal, barring accident. The accelerated stopped when the additional growth hormones were stopped, which means I will age normally from now on."

"Mm-hmm. And who administered the growth hormones?" That broke his flow, and into his hesitation she flung another question. "For that matter, who cloned you? Whose top-secret project are you?"

"Okay, time-out," he said, raising his hands in the sports gesture. His brow was furrowed, but he was still cautious of the recorder and anyone who might hear them. "We both know that you _know_ the answers to these questions."

"Yes, I do. But the next reporter you talk to _won't_, and you can't just talk to me your whole life. Not even Superman manages that. So do this for real, like you've never spoken to me before. And unlike a real interview, if you make a mistake I won't print it." Lois smirked, and Jason's sunny smile broke through in answer. "So, Superboy, who created you? My readership wants to know."

"I'm not at liberty to say," he replied, and she scoffed.

"Yeah, right, I'm not buying that. Our government? I can see plenty of military minds who'd want their own pet Superman. No, wait, somebody else's government. Superman's a citizen of the world, but he's most closely associated with the United States. So you're what, the Canadian knockoff? Or a European import, maybe?"

She saw him consider that and reject it. "No, I was created right here in the U.S.," he started to say, and Lois snickered. _Conceived in the Arctic, born in Paris._ He glared and continued, "But the facility is private, not government-run, and they'd suffer legal consequences if I revealed my origin."

"Oh, so you're a mad scientist's experiment. Maybe you should consider Frankenboy as a code name?" Her thumb hovered over the recorder's stop button, pointing at him to warn him to keep silent.

"You sound a lot like Blur," he growled.

Lois was on that tidbit in the instant it came out of his mouth. "Do I? Y'know, virtually nothing is known about the Blur. Care to enlighten my readers while you're at it?" Other reporters would certain try to lead him into trouble like that.

"I have no intention of revealing anyone else's secrets," Superboy said frostily. "My own are enough trouble to deal with."

Lois decided to have a little mercy on him, but only a little. "All right, I'll let that slide. So _why_ were you created in this mysterious lab? And are there any others? If there's an army of Super-clones lurking somewhere—or Wonder-clones, or Martian-clones, or anyone else—you can bet people will be alarmed."

Caught off-guard, he stammered, "Uh, no, there's no others. Not that I know of anyway."

Then it was Lois' turn for the time-out gesture. "You sound like a politician—a green one, at that. I'll write that up as 'To the best of my knowledge, there are no others, and I have no reason to believe there might be.' Got it? You have got to be more careful with the way you word things, kiddo." The boy puffed out his cheeks when he sighed, making her lips quirk. "Okay, then. back to work. Your reason for existing?"

The break in character made him grin. "Thanks. The reason I'm here is to carry on Superman's legacy. As you noticed, he doesn't have a family, and part of my purpose in life is to help him in his mission, and to further it."

_Nicely done,_ Lois thought, and gave him a quick wink. Jason beamed at her, proud of himself. From there the interview went much better—at least until she caught him without a ready answer again, and the verbal sparring started up anew.

…

Clark was completely unsurprised to hear his phone ringing even before Lois made it back to her office. He and Jason had discussed the big unveiling over the past few days, and he'd encouraged Jason to just spring it on Lois, the way any other hero would. Well, very few other heroes would have Lois' cell phone number, and even fewer of them would get her to an impromptu meeting. Although the coffee would've helped—the way to an editor's Metro section could theoretically be through her caffeine addiction. At least a little.

Clark had known exactly what he was doing when he made the suggestion. Forewarned, Lois might've gone just a little easier on Jason, and that would be counterproductive. One of the things Clark valued most about his working relationship with her was that since that very first star-struck interview, she had never, ever soft-pedaled him. On a flight, she was as filled with wonder and delight as a child; at home together, she was his beloved wife. But when she was in reporter-mode, Lois was fierce with everyone, even Superman.

Jason had to see his mother with the gloves off. It was the only way to prepare him for every other ruthless journalist he would encounter—and there would be many during his career as a hero. One mistake, and all of their secrets would come tumbling out. It was best for him to learn, as Clark had, from someone who was on their side, but who never pulled a punch.

So he answered the phone already prepared for his son's disbelief and frustration. "Hello, Jason," he said.

"How come Mom is so _mean_?" Jason asked plaintively, sounding just like he had at eight when she had caught him red-handed raiding the container of chocolate chip cookies at Christmas.

Clark could resist a chuckle. "She's not mean. She's a reporter. A darn good one, too."

"Yeah, but she was never like this to _you_," Jason muttered, clearly disgruntled.

Clark laughed. "Oh, yes she was. For the same reason, too. She'd rather be the one to hit me with the hard questions, the one to make me stumble, rather than let me make mistakes in front of anyone else. Don't worry; she'll edit out the worst of it."

"But _why_?" Jason asked again. "Why does she have to be so … so confrontational and everything? I had everything planned out, and she ripped it apart from the first sentence!"

"She does that," Clark admitted. "Son, you can't come to a reporter with a prepared story. That's a press release, and you don't get the privilege of those unless you're very well known or representing an entire group. And even then, you have to answer questions afterward. Better get used to it now. Interviewing with a really good reporter is always a little bit like playing tennis."

"Yeah, and Mom serves the ball right at your teeth," Jason said gloomily.

"I didn't really know how to do an interview when I first started out," Clark told him. "Your mom taught me, and I'm grateful for it. Since then I've talked to reporters in more countries than I can remember, representing all kinds of newspapers and magazines and TV stations. If I hadn't dealt with her first, if she hadn't taught me how to react to one of those brutal questions, I'd be stuck in a public relations nightmare now. And you know how important PR is for us."

The line was silent. Jason knew; they were both quite conscious of the fact that the entire caped community maintained a diligent watch on the media. The kinds of powers and resources they had could easily be misused. If they weren't careful how they represented themselves, the kind of casual chatter amongst their own people could easily be misinterpreted. And once the seeds of mistrust were sown, they were very hard to weed out.

Clark suspected there was another reason for Jason's mood. "I wonder if maybe part of the reason you're upset is that you crafted your speech for someone other than Mom?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Jason grumbled.

Smiling, Clark prodded gently. "Someone in California, maybe? A certain chemistry major at Berkeley?"

"Elise has nothing to do with this," Jason snapped. "She's taking sixteen units this semester; she doesn't have _time_ to read the news."

_She also doesn't have time for a boyfriend,_ was the unspoken thought. Clark managed not to sigh. Jason and Elise hadn't exactly broken up. She had requested a break during college, since both of them were pursuing intense academic degrees. Jason had agreed reluctantly, and Clark was certain that his son didn't consider himself single. He was still Elise's boyfriend in his own mind, they were just on hiatus.

Clark was equally certain that Elise didn't view the arrangement the same way. She was a level-headed, intelligent young woman, and the idea of meeting one's true love at fourteen and living happily ever after just didn't jibe with her intrinsic realism. The fact that Jason _did_ firmly believe in One True Love, Forever and Ever, only made her more wary.

The consensus within the family was that Elise would always be a part of their lives. Being part of the Super-family was daunting, but Elise didn't lack for courage. With some breathing room to think about what she wanted, she'd probably come back—someday. And thankfully, Jason was giving her the space she needed. If he had tried to maintain their relationship long distance, it probably would've broken down from all the stresses on it.

And even if Elise never came back to Jason, she'd been one of Kala's friends first, and she knew the secret. Only a select group of people knew the truth, and as one of them, Elise would _always_ be one of the family.

To get Jason onto a happier train of thought, Clark said, "Well, the good news is, you accomplished your main goal. You can finally stop arguing with Tim over the name."

Jason groaned loudly. "He _had_ to say it out loud on an unsecured band! He got that off some internet name generator, Dad! Everybody else gets some kind of name that means something, mine was off the internet."

"Could be worse," Clark offered. "Your _sister_ could've been the one who slipped on an unsecure comm."

"Yeah, _right_," Jason groused. Kala had always had her own idea for his secret identity: Lizardboy, aka Iguanaman, with a bright green costume, black and green striped tights, and spikes down the back. There was also a fake tail. "Gazeera is like the Methuselah of iguanas, and she's still sneaking over here to the dorm and putting a little cape on him while I'm in class. My roommates already think I'm weird, and she's making it worse."

"Kala loves to tease you," Clark said. "It's how she tells you she misses you."

"With little sticky notes on his cage that say, 'I wanna be your sidekick! Rawr!' and crap like that? No, it's how she makes me glad we don't both live under the same roof anymore."

"This from the boy who picks her up and swings her around whenever you're both home," Clark replied dryly.

He could hear Jason make a sound of irritated annoyance. "Yeah, I'm just trying to get up enough velocity to let go and land her somewhere in Brazil."

"Oh, stop it. We both know better. Jason, you love your sister," Clark chided.

"I know, that's why she's still alive and has all her limbs. She's an obnoxious little jerk, and if my roommates knew that, they'd quit drooling over her photo like a bunch of retarded fanboys." Grumpy Jason was always quite amusing, and Clark talked to him a little longer, eventually hanging up the phone with a smile.

Throughout the call, he'd felt the pressure of Lois' gaze on him, and when he finally looked up to meet it, she was leaned back in her chair with her arms crossed and looking as grumpy as her son had sounded, nearly glaring a hole in the glass that separated their offices. That said, she was at least smirking at him. Lois pointed one finger in his direction, her red nail polish seeming to blaze at him. _You're paying for that one, mister,_ she mouthed, and Clark grinned back. In reply, he just grinned and waved, mouthing _I love you_.

With Lois Lane, the best defense was to never take offense.

…

Kala's cell phone rang, and since she was in the passenger seat and the ring tone was a section of Wagner's _Ride of the Valkyries_, she answered it. "Hi Mom," she said.

"Hi, Mom!" Sebast called, leaning over her shoulder.

Lois chuckled. "Hi, kids. What're you up to, Kala?"

"Riding out to this club in East Nowhere, population 800," Kala told her mom. It was a ridiculous gig, but it was exposure, and they never turned that down. Not even when they'd wind up paying more for gasoline, food, and a hotel room than they'd make from the gig. Especially not when it was _their _gig, not a sideline with someone else's band.

Not that they actually _had_ a band yet. Fungiferous Flora had dissolved, and she and Sebast were striking out on their own under the name Sonic Death Monkey. Morgan, a friend of a friend in Metropolis who'd taught them both to play guitar, was along on the trip to play bass, and the club would provide a drum machine since they lacked an actual drummer. The three of them were in the van Kala had bought to transport them and their equipment, and at the moment Morgan was driving, which was why Kala had answered the phone.

Morgan was a handsome blond boy with longish hair and impeccable taste in clothes. From about the second guitar lesson, Sebast had been completely infatuated with him. Unfortunately for Sebast, Morgan was completely straight—he took Sebast's flirting as a compliment while he eyed Kala appreciatively. She definitely could've gone there, being between relationships at the moment, but it would've caused problems with Sebast. Her best friend was more important than any fling, anyway, no matter how pretty Morgan was.

"Uh-huh. Are you driving safe?" Lois asked.

"Nope, I'm riding shotgun. Morgan's driving," Kala replied cheerily. "How're things back home?"

Just the slightest pause, and then Lois' voice sounded awfully cagey. "Oh, well enough. Did you know your father and brother were planning a little surprise for me?"

"No," Kala said slowly. Oh, that sound like some bad juju afoot. She was suddenly glad she hadn't had a hand in whatever this was. "What's up?"

"Oh, it seems that your brother is thinking of changing his nickname," Lois said. Even though she could tell she wasn't on speakerphone, she wouldn't say anything incriminating on the off-chance that Morgan or Sebast might hear it.

Kala played along. "He's sick of being Lizardboy? That's not exactly a surprise, Mom."

"Oh, but what he wants to change it to is," Lois replied.

When the realization hit, Kala managed not to let it show on her face. It felt like a swift punch to the gut. _He's going to be Superboy. My brother's finally going to wear the shield and the name._ "Huh," was all she said out loud, fighting for emotional equilibrium.

Bitter resentment wasn't something she wanted to feel toward her sweet, goofy big brother, but it burned in her chest anyway. Part of her wanted to cry, _How come Jase gets to be a Super, and I don't? How come he gets the glory and the legacy, and I'm still second-best?_ She fought it, knowing exactly why she had pushed forward with the dream of singing rather than join Jason. After Nevada, she thought she'd stamped out that petulant little voice, but it never quite died, no matter how many times she throttled it.

As she had several times before, Kala talked down that part of her mind. _I am of the House of El, I am part of my father's legacy, and nothing can change that. Jason is better at the hero stuff, I know that and I accept it, so it's just good sense that he's active in the community while I'm not. I don't even think I'd be particularly good at the hero business anyway, at least not until I'm older and have my life as figured out as he does. And since only one of us can use the name without risking the secret, Jason is the obvious choice. We've already discussed this. I __**know**__ that. He'll actually __**use**__ the name._ _So there's no point in getting screwed up over this. Just let it go, Kal._

It didn't hurt quite as much as the first time, and when Lois asked if she was all right, Kala was able to reply without a trace of falsehood, "Sure, Mom. But you know he'll always be Lizardboy to me."

"That's my girl. I know it's hard, but I'm proud of you, you know?" Lois said approvingly. She knew Mom was a little worried, could read it in there, but it was to be discussed another time, without prying ears. "So, tell me, brat: how goes the Great Band Search?"

That brought a smile back out; assurances of Mom's love always did that these days. Kala cupped her hand around the phone and mock-whispered, "Don't tell _him_, but Sebast and I are trying to get Morgan to join up."

"Not happening," Morgan said from beside her, half-turning to give her a quick grin. God, that boy had one hell of a smile.

"Sooner or later, we'll convince you," Sebast purred from the backseat, locking eyes with Morgan in the rearview mirror and giving him his best Latino smolder.

"Do you have something in your eye? You're kind of squinting," Morgan asked, all innocence, and Kala cracked up as Sebast swore under his breath.

"Oh my God, Mom, these _boys_," Kala wheezed.

"Can't live with 'em, can't fit 'em all in the asylum," Lois cracked.

Kala snickered. "So true. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother."

"And to think, at one point you gave serious thought to being a doctor's wife," Lois said.

At the mention of Nick Powell, Sebast—who was eavesdropping shamelessly—hissed and made the sign of the cross. "Are you kidding, Mom? I would've rather her been the mechanic's wife!"

"Nick is happy in medical school, and I'm happy with my life," Kala said. Lois had probably already heard that he and Jason had crossed paths at Johns Hopkins, resulting in a mutual death-glare which probably caught a few innocent bystanders in its path. Her brother—and Sebast—would _never_ like her ex, probably because he'd been her first lover. Kala thought they were both ridiculous. She wasn't Jason, to decide on his lifelong mate at the tender age of fourteen, and never get serious with anyone else. No, she and Nick had had fun together, they'd cared a lot about each other, but they'd both known the end was inevitable. She couldn't go home to Boston with him, she couldn't follow him on to medical school, and he couldn't give up everything to follow her, either.

Besides, Kala could no more be a doctor's wife than Dustin could live in Metropolis. He'd tried; the summer after high school, he had come to the city ostensibly to help her and Jason fix up their first car for a long road trip. Kala had ended up dating him, which given his years-long crush on her was probably predictable.

Kala still thought back on that summer with a wistful sigh. Dustin was … well, he wasn't like any of the boys in Metropolis. Patient, thoughtful, considerate, and yet he had a certain poetic sensitivity in his soul that made him more than just a nice boy. Dustin was the one who'd combed his hands through her hair slowly, telling her the glints of blue within the black looked almost like stars in the night sky.

Jason had _not_ been happy about his best friend dating his sister, but Dustin had refused to get mad at him, and Kala had smacked him in the head and told him to stop being a dweeb. They'd had a glorious summer romance that culminated in the road trip to the cabin down in North Carolina, Jason and Elise and Dustin and Kala going on a two-week double-date. Sebast had been in Puerto Rico at the time, sweltering away during his family's annual trip, but he'd been able to meet them at the cabin for a few days anyway.

It had been in North Carolina, surrounded by the songs of crickets and cicadas during those warm summer nights, that Kala and Dustin had realized they didn't have a future, either. He hadn't been happy staying in Metropolis; every normal city noise woke him up at night, and even after a week he still got lost every time he went somewhere new by himself.

Kala could even remember the exact moment she'd known it was going to end: they'd been lying in bed, and Dustin had run his fingers through her hair again. "When we were in the city, these were the only stars I had," he'd murmured in tones of such sorrow that she knew, _knew_, he could never live in a major city. And her life, if she was successful, was going to be all about big cities, a new one every other night. The thought of it thrilled Kala, but it nauseated him.

Dustin wouldn't be happy living such a vagabond life. He had enjoyed the road trip, but only because there was a log cabin in the woods waiting at the end of it. If he'd had to travel every weekend like she and Sebast were now, it would kill him slowly. Dustin had roots in Smallville, and needed to stay close to the wide-open prairies and gorgeous skies of Kansas. A long-term relationship with him would either mean months of being apart, or months of unhappiness as they tried to follow each other's diverging paths.

Luckily, he'd known it before she had. When Kala hesitantly brought it up, Dustin had laughed and kissed her. "I knew from the first time I heard you sing that you weren't gonna be a mechanic's wife," he'd told her. "You were meant for bigger and brighter things than Smallville. Doesn't mean we can't always be friends, and doesn't mean we can't love each other much as we can while we have each other."

And that, she thought with a slow smile, was why she loved Dustin best of all. No one she'd dated before or since meant so much to her. It was just bad luck that they couldn't live in each other's worlds. Somewhere out there was someone who could handle her life with all of its various kinds of craziness. And even if she didn't find them anytime soon, she had her best friend right beside her through all of it.

Sebast had been explaining Dustin to Morgan while Kala mused, and Lois' chuckle in her ear brought her out of her reverie. Kala sighed. "No, no, no, Sebast. No mechanic's wife. Why would I wanna marry anyone when I'm keeping you forever?" She batted her eyelashes at him, and Sebast snorted amusement.

"Yeah, you're keeping him—on a leash," Morgan quipped.

Sebast swatted his shoulder lightly. "Shh, her mom can hear you! I don't want her to know we're kinky!"

Kala groaned as Lois broke into laughter. "Oh, God, why me? Mom, I have to go, they're starting to show out for company."

"Keep 'em in line, baby girl," Lois said. "I love you."

"I love you, too, Mom," Kala said, and hung up. Once order was restored by glares and shoulder-punches to the boys, she went back to looking out the window. _You never know, the one for me might even be at a tiny little gig like this. It could happen…_. _But until then, I'll make do with the warmth of the stage lights and the yell of the crowd._


	2. Whenever You're Away From Me

Taking a moment to give a tip of the hat to **saavikam77 at livejournal** and **quipquipquip at Tumblr** for the little nudges and winks on the members of Batclan mentioned in this chapter. There are little pieces of their characterizations that saw here and we wanted to acknowledge the awesome of these two authors.

* * *

><p>"Dick never had to deal with a registration database," Tim Drake said, irritation clear in his voice. "Really, when did putting 'ridiculously sexy' under 'other powers' become a meme? You'd think we were all in middle school."<p>

"Tim, some people do have a sense of humor," Cassie Sandsmark said, looking over Tim's shoulder at Jason. Both of them tried not to grin; Tim had a point, even if his perfectionist tendencies were a source of amusement to his friends. When Dick had been the head of the Teen Titans, they'd always had an adult mentor whose job it was to take care of the boring official stuff. But with the first generation of Titans now more or less integrated into the League itself, and the second generation about to leave their teen years, they were a self-supporting organization. They were also no longer the Teen Titans; just the Titans these days, an auxiliary of the Justice League of America.

Now Tim was officially in charge, and among other things it was his job to make sure everyone was properly registered in the database of the main computer system in Titans Tower. And while he _did_ have a sense of humor, for Tim some things were beyond joking. When he was operating in Red Robin mode, he was as serious as the Bat himself. And with everything going down in Gotham right now, some new masked criminal taking the gang world by storm and Batman stonewalling all attempts at outside assistance, Tim was sterner than ever.

Lucky for him, while the organizational chart might show him as official and absolute leader of the group, in actual practice the Titans were run by their own trinity: Jason and Cassie were as much in charge as Tim was. It helped that the three of them were best friends. Unlike the League, who had all met as adults and who'd had to learn to trust in one another, the Titans had met much younger, and their working partnerships were even stronger. Whereas most of the members of the League tended to think in terms of individuals or families, the Titans tended to group themselves into teams with a variety of backgrounds and powers. It wasn't perfect, and there were still family rivalries—you couldn't have Bats and Arrows on the same team without a Wonder or a Super to stop them from head-butting each other—but it was an excellent level of teamwork nonetheless.

"You know, if you just leave it like that, eventually they'll get embarrassed enough to change it," Jason said. He was often the conciliatory one in their set; he preferred to lead by example and remain mostly hands-off in terms of rules and enforcement. Tim, raised under Batman's rigid discipline, preferred a clear set of guidelines and punished infractions with Bruce's brutal fairness.

"And then Oracle will conduct a random sweep of our database, because she's just as much a control freak as Tim is, and we'll get yelled at," Cassie pointed out. She was a born mediator, capable of being as serious as Tim or as mellow as Jason, and choosing her position to suit the situation. Only Cassie could convince Jason to give someone a well-deserved dressing-down and talk Tim into letting mistakes—especially his own—slide.

"Fine," Jason said with a sigh. "Let's split the database in thirds and go through them individually. It's probably a good idea to audit this stuff periodically, anyway."

The main computer bank could function as three terminals, which was how they went about combing through the system. After ten minutes, even Jason was growing annoyed with the amount of silliness he kept finding. "After this, one of us keys everything in," he muttered.

"I told you they weren't capable of being professional," Tim shot back. "Look what—"

His sentence was cut off by Right Said Fred blaring from Cassie's monitor. Wonder Girl leaned back in her chair, laughing so hard tears started to run from the corners of her eyes. "What the hell is that?" Tim snapped.

Still snickering, Cassie managed to say, "I think we found the source of the problem." She pointed at the screen, where Dick Grayson's profile shot had been replaced by a photo shot from the back and cropped above the waist and below the knees.

Tim glared at the screen, and saw that the line for 'Main Powers' now read 'Bat Ass'. "I hate him," Tim growled.

"The song must be embedded in the image," Jason said. "Cassie, if you delete it…."

"Gotcha," she said. As soon as the image disappeared, the music vanished too. "Now what are we going to do for a picture of Nightwing?"

"Here," Tim said, typing quickly. A moment later the photo was replaced by a drawing known all over the internet as 'troll face'. Under it in all caps was the message 'U MAD BRO?' While Cassie and Jason chuckled at the joke, Tim added 'Marsha Brady' to the line for aliases.

"Think we figured out who was behind all this?" Jason asked, still laughing. Unlike most of the Bats, Dick had a sense of humor and would laugh when he found out about the prank.

Tim shook his head. "Dick messed around with his own info, but he doesn't have the hacking skills to change everyone else's profile."

"Babs," Cassie said with surety. "There's no system she can't breach, and ours isn't meant to be secure from Watchtower. I think we should just be happy she and Dick got along for long enough to mess with us."

"Oracle wouldn't stoop to a juvenile prank like this," Tim said.

"Hmm. Depends on who was egging her on." Cassie raised one eyebrow at him. "She might do it just to see how good our security is, and how long it would take before we noticed." She might also have done it to see how Tim would react, and gauge his level of obsessive focus.

"Maybe we should let her know we're on to her?" Jason said thoughtfully. With that he brought up her profile, and scrolling down to the section for 'Skills', added a phrase to the middle: 'pestering the junior league'.

That got a few snickers, even restoring Tim's good humor. "While we're at it, let's back up the database just in case she decides to wipe all of our data," he said. "I can live without the 'you should be prepared for anything' lecture."

…

"So, your name is Raven?" Kala said, skepticism dripping from her voice.

"Yes," the bass voice rumbled. The drummer standing in front of her was easily six foot five, and probably didn't weigh much more than she did. The mesh shirt he wore allowed pale ribs to show through, but unlike every other drummer she'd interviewed, no tattoos adorned his skin. His head, however, was shaved except for one circular patch of hair high on his skull, which had been grown out longer than her own hair, bleached, and dyed a bright, unnatural blue. As far as looks went, he wasn't unattractive, but the studiously-cultivated sneer of disdain that many Goth kids affected wasn't doing him any favors.

Sebast, lounging beside her, cut Kala a look. The search for a drummer had led him to coin Vélez' Theorem of Logarithmic Weirdness: musicians were weirder than the general population, Goth musicians were weirder than other genres, and drummers of any genre were weirder than guitarists or bassists or keyboardists. Therefore Goth drummers were outright _freaks_. The expression in his green eyes seemed to suggest that this one was even stranger than most—though not their last candidate, who had brought his wisdom teeth in a jar of alcohol to the interview.

Kala looked up at the young man and said flatly, "Fun fact: if you yell 'Raven, you've won the door prize of ten thousand dollars!' at a Goth concert, half the crowd will die in the stampede. So no, I don't believe your name is Raven. Try again."

"I believe in the individual's right to express themselves through their name," he told her.

"Yeah, and I believe in having your accurate legal name on contracts and tax forms," Kala shot back. "Let me see your ID."

"If you'll let me see yours, 'Kala'," he retorted.

"Fine by me." She reached into her purse for her wallet, and exchanged it for the drummer's. One look at his license, however, showed her why he'd changed his name. "Nedrick? Wow."

"Hey, your name really is Kala," he said, handing her back her license. "Yeah, I don't really go by my real name. Ever."

Sebast looked at Kala. This one had the best jam session with the band of any of the applicants, and the fewest strange personal habits. She arched an eyebrow at him, and he shrugged. "Unfortunately you don't look like a Raven. Guys named Raven are always douchebags. So welcome to the band, Ned."

"No one ever heard of a drummer named Ned," he muttered darkly.

"Then you're unique," Morgan piped up, stepping into the back of the van where the rest were sitting, trying to avoid the swampy heat. "New Orleans Ned, the legendary bayou percussionist. We can swing that."

Ned folded his tall frame to sit on the running board of the van. "I guess. What kind of deal are we talking, here?"

Kala ran down the standard contract she and Sebast had hammered out, with some help from a lawyer who owed her mom a few favors. The whole time she was discussing clauses with Ned, Sebast was looking over her shoulder at Morgan, giving him his best Latino smolder. Finally, Morgan had had enough. "Quit it already, Sebast. Even if I swung that way, it's too goddamned hot. Ned, how the hell do you survive in this?"

Ned just laughed, a more genuine laugh than the studied chuckle they'd heard before. A touch of southern accent surfaced in his words as well. "This is only spring, Yankee. Wait 'til July, August, when the temperature's pushing a hundred and ten and the humidity's ninety-eight percent. You can fry an egg on the sidewalk, then. People cut their lawns at six-thirty in the morning, 'cause doing it at noon is asking for a heart attack."

"Note to self: never tour the South in summer," Kala said. The heat didn't bother her so much, but the humidity did make her feel like she was breathing through a wet towel.

"It's no worse than Ponce in the summer, _mami,_" Sebast chuckled. "That's why all the Latin people sleep in the middle of the day. We're not stupid enough to go out in the heat and die."

"All right, that's about it," Kala said, passing Ned the papers and holding out a pen. "Sign on the dotted line at the bottom of each page, and we're good to go."

"What I want to know," Morgan said as Ned signed, "is when you're going to hire a guitarist."

"Oh, darling, how would we ever find one better than you?" Sebast purred.

"You'd better look harder. I won't always be here," Morgan insisted.

Sebast leaned toward him, as if about to place one finger over his lips—but not actually touching him. "Shh, don't talk. I know you're afraid of commitment, but so am I. It's gonna be okay, _papi_."

Morgan just gave Kala a long-suffering look, and she smiled back at him. Before she could comment, Ned asked, "Does he do that to everybody?"

"No, just the pretty metro boys," Sebast shot back. "You're safe unless you eat a dozen cheeseburgers and pick a hair color that doesn't glow in the dark."

Ned just shook his head and finished signing. "Well, here we go. For better or for worse."

"For better," Sebast cut in. "Trust me, _mano_, this band is going somewhere." Kala only grinned, and her best friend returned the look. If determination counted for anything, they were going to strike it rich someday.

…

"Ames! Where the hell are you!" Lois shouted into the phone.

"Uh, Forty-fifth and Main…" the hapless reporter answered.

"You're supposed to be on Sixty-Eighth and McNeill! Get moving, Ames, speeding tickets are part of the job!" Lois flung the phone down and swore a few times, pausing only to glare across Perry's office and into Clark's.

He was talking to that young brunette who'd just gotten promoted from intern to reporter. Lois narrowed her eyes; if Krista Khan had worked for City, she would've been Lois' favorite. She was intense, dedicated, and had a true reporter's insatiable curiosity. Since she worked in International, and worse, she listened to Clark when he sent her out after what was rightfully a _City_ story, Lois loathed the sight of her.

Her own up-and-coming star of the City department, Phillip Murray, was currently running down a story. Sure, it had _begun_ in the Qurac embassy, but the meat of the story was the corruption right here in Metropolis. So it was City's story, and Smallville had better give up this crazy idea he had of stealing it.

Perry referred to the ensuing squabble as Lois and Clark 'fighting like two cats in a sack'. He also smiled like it was _his_ idea, and Lois shot him a vicious look too. This was _her_ story, _her_ department would land it, and _her_ protégé's name would be on the byline. Everyone else just needed to get the hell out of her way.

Speaking of which, she needed to check up on him. Lois dialed Phillip's cell, and he answered in distracted tones. "Phil, how goes it?"

"Pretty good, boss. I've got a lead on the buyer. At this rate we might even find the drugs _and_ the state secrets before the cops do."

Lois smiled broadly. "Attaboy. Just keep your eyes peeled. I don't want any other reporters scooping us. Especially not from my own paper."

Murray barely stifled a cough—or a chuckle, Lois couldn't really tell. "I will, boss. Don't worry."

Lois broke the connection before she could growl at him. _Don't worry._ Yeah, right, with that sneaky underhanded devil over there in International, and his pet reporter too—

—said pet reporter who was suddenly no longer visible in the bullpen—

—Lois cursed under her breath and snatched up her phone, calling Ames back. "Forget about the stolen jewels for now. I'll have someone else follow up. I want you to head back here and try to spot a tan Honda Civic somewhere between the _Planet_ and Embassy Row."

"A tan Honda Civic? Isn't that Khan's car?" Ames asked, confused.

Lois smiled evilly. "Yes, it is. And she's trying to scoop City's story, so I want you all over that car like white on rice, got it? Do whatever you have to do to keep her from snatching our story."

Leaning back in her desk chair, Lois smiled devilishly at her husband across two offices. So he'd tried to sneak his star reporter past her, had he? There was no fooling a Lane, and he ought to know it by now.

She had no idea that Perry was watching them both, and keeping an eye on the internal company instant-messaging service. The betting was running heavily toward Lois and Clark ending up in the supply room together by lunchtime.

…

The setting sun turned the stream to gold, and the shadows of the trees stretched from one bank to the other. Martha hadn't had any luck with midges, in spite of how many of them were dancing above the water, so she tied a 'watermelon' fly on her line. Bright pink and green, it looked like nothing in nature, but Ben had a theory that some flies just made the fish mad enough to hit them.

Sure enough, she connected on her second cast into the quiet water below an old snag. "Got a good-sized one on the line," she called over her shoulder to Ben.

"Good. One more and we'll have dinner in the pan," he called back.

She played the fish delicately, letting the elasticity of the rod do the work for her, and reflected on the past few years. The days of traveling across states for good fishing were done, but there were streams and ponds enough on their land to keep them entertained. Instead of towing the camper to Montana and Idaho and once, even to Washington, they just brought their personal Hilton, as Ben called it, to the back forty. They still got to wake up streamside and fish for breakfast mere feet from their door, and they could do it all less than five miles from the house. These days, that was a perfect vacation. Though they were both active and healthy, neither of them were getting any younger.

At last, Martha netted the smallmouth bass and brought it to the bank for a quick dispatch. She handed it over to Ben for cleaning while she put away her tackle, and then breaded his earlier catch and got the frying pan heated up on the coals of their campfire. Four beagles watched the procedure avidly, certain that a filet or two would come their way. "You're delusional, kids," Martha told them, setting four tails wagging hopefully.

Ben handed over her bass, which was given the same simple treatment as his bluegill, and then they sat down to a meal of fish, potatoes wrapped in foil and baked in the coals, and salad vegetables picked that morning in their garden. "No five-star restaurant in the country has it this good," Ben pronounced, and Martha smiled.

As if on cue, Martha's cell phone rang. Laughing, she answered it. "This is Martha Hubbard."

"Hi, Grandma," Kala's cheerful voice said. "I hope I'm not interrupting dinner."

"Well, darling, you are, but if you don't mind me listening with my mouth full, we'll be all right." That got a giggle that hadn't changed since Kala was six, and Martha leaned back in her camp chair while her granddaughter filled her in on the news.

"…and Jason is _still_ moping after Elise. They're supposed to be taking time off for college, and he's got her picture in his wallet. It'd be pathetic if it wasn't so cute. So how're you and Grandpa Ben?"

"Oh, we're doing tolerably well," Martha told her. "Camping by the brook tonight, and having fresh-caught fish for dinner. With a beagle between my feet trying to tell me he hasn't eaten in weeks, poor thing."

Kala laughed. "They're all like that, aren't they? Hey, the band is going to play Amarillo in two weeks, and I thought Sebast and I would swing up through Kansas on the way home. Mind if we stop by?"

"Not at all, darling! We'd love to have you both. Maybe I can pack you up a beagle to go. I hear all celebrities are carrying dogs these days." Ben mock-scowled at her and the dogs inched closer, eyeing her plate.

"Now _that_ would set a trend. Only problem is, the beagles like to try and sing along whenever I hit a high note." They teased back and forth a little longer, and eventually Martha passed the phone to Ben so she could finish her dinner.

When she dreamed of grandchildren, Martha had imagined a boy like Jason, or perhaps a girl like Kristin. Kala was something else entirely, such a sweet and loving little girl who'd grown into such a polished and pretty young woman. Even if she _did_ tend to hide her beauty under a pound and a half of makeup. Martha didn't even bother to worry about Kala's sense of fashion, since she might as well have lived in another world. After all, most Smallville residents bought their clothes from one of several catalogs: Sears, Land's End, L.L. Bean, and Cabela's all featured prominently.

Then again, she'd given up on worrying about Kala's appearance during the girl's late teens, when her hair had been a different jelly-bean color every time Martha saw her. She'd never forget the day Kala had walked in the door with bright purple hair, streaked with pink. Martha had been startled into saying, 'Your hair looks like an Easter egg!' and Kala had laughed and hugged her. It had actually been charming, once she got used to it, though the town gossips bemoaned the fact that _other_ girls started streaking their hair funny colors once Kala paraded it around town. Silas Lang had even briefly carried something called Manic Panic in the Smallville General Store.

Oh yes, Kala marched to the beat of her own drummer, but what else could anyone expect of the daughter of That Eastern Gal, as Lois was still known? Jason fit in better, spending his vacations in Smallville camping, fishing, gardening, and tinkering with old cars beside his best friend Dustin. The younger Carmichael boy was setting up to take over his father's garage, while his big brother Wade had moved on to stock car racing, to no one's surprise. At least Wade had finally married, to a dark-haired girl from somewhere back east, which also surprised no one in town.

On the whole, Martha considered herself extremely lucky. In her life she'd had the love of not one, but _two_ wonderful men, a son who adored her, and a daughter-in-law and grandchildren who ensured that her life would be boring. Thanks to the way Lois and Clark had finally gotten together, Martha had also ended up part of two other families: the Whites, which allowed her to claim Lana as an in-law of sorts, and the Lanes, where she'd met one of her best friends in Ella.

She still missed Ella Lane, the sly humor masquerading beneath queenly dignity, the open-hearted love for Clark and the grandkids, and the shared frustration with their children's stubbornness. But Martha knew that any separation was only temporary, just as she'd come to realize her parting from Jonathan was. Decades might seem long in this life, and filled with moments of fear and grief even as they uplifted by times of joy and wonder. Still, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was something more, something greater. She had _proof_.

Random chance hadn't sent Clark into her path; Martha would never believe that. He was the answer to her prayers, and because of him her life had been a long, strange, amazing journey full of marvels. And his arrival was still rippling through the world. Mere feet from her, her second husband was talking to her granddaughter, another child who by the laws of chance shouldn't even exist, and shouldn't have managed to grow up sane and happy with the things that had happened to her in her childhood.

As Ben chuckled at something Kala said, Martha basked in contentment. She couldn't ask for more from her life.

Although, as a rough tongue lapped at her hand, she _could_ wish for fewer beagles begging and howling and every other mad thing they did!

…

"You ever have that feeling like the walls are closing in on you?" Spoiler quipped, and Red Robin scowled at her.

"Bad timing," Tim snapped, and their grappling guns fired in unison, sweeping them out of the path of a brick wall that suddenly toppled over.

"No, bad pun. Robins are all about them," Stephanie Brown retorted as they ran, crouched, along the parapet for cover. Gunfire tracked their movements. "Really, who drops an entire _wall_ to take out two people?"

"Someone who knows how hard it is to keep a good Robin down," came a third, joking voice, and both of them whirled before they realized it was Superboy.

"Hey, homeslice, leave the punning to the Bat-kids," Steph teased, grinning merrily. "Got any ideas?"

Jason looked over the parapet, ignoring the bullets that ricocheted off his chest. "Looks like five or six guys. Wearing masks—no, half-masks. And their uniforms are half one color, half another. Probably Dent, then."

"Or Joker. It could always be Joker. He doesn't play by the rules." Tim shrugged. "Let's outflank them. SB, play target?"

"Sure," Jason said, and stepped up to the edge of the parapet. Renewed gunfire peppered the air, and he caught bullets leisurely. "Hey, you guys wanna do charades? Who does this remind you of?" With that he tossed a bullet in the air and caught it, smashing it flat between his palms. "Any clues yet? Anybody? Bueller?"

Realizing they couldn't hurt him, the thugs were about to turn away in frustration, and Jason couldn't allow that. His friends were circling around behind them, and he needed to keep the bad guys' attention on him. So he stepped off the roof.

Falling, oh, how he _hated_ falling. He could leap tall buildings in a single bound, but always cringed just a little as gravity reclaimed him. Over time he'd learned to control his leaps and landings, but whenever he did this it always felt like he was leaving part of his stomach behind.

The sidewalk cracked beneath his feet, and Jason bent his knees slightly to distribute the force of the impact. He'd learned that here in Gotham, training with Dick and Tim. He'd also starved himself of sunlight to learn how to fight _without_ using powers as a shortcut, and that had been a harrowing time. Especially the roof-running, he'd _loathed_ doing that without his invulnerability to protect him.

The thugs turned back to him, reflexively firing off a few more rounds which Jason ignored. "Really, guys? That all you got?" he taunted. Behind them, through the building they'd been walking toward, he could see Tim and Steph moving in.

"Guess again, brat," one of the men snarled, and flipped open some kind of container fixed to his belt. Jason knew what it was before he saw the green glow, before the man even took it out. Nothing else turned his knees to water or felt like angry wasps stinging _under_ his skin.

As he slumped to the ground, gasping for air, Red Robin and Spoiler surged to the attack. Steph came in with a flying leap and a boot to the head of the guy holding the kryptonite, while Tim guarded her flank, his bō staff making quick work of the men who turned on them both. Using the sharp edge of a batarang, Steph sliced the lead-lined container off the thug's belt, and shoved the kryptonite safely back inside.

Jason shook his head to clear it, and saw that one man had moved a little apart from the others. He was aiming his gun at Steph, but before Jason could leap between them, the man's gun arm seemed to sprout a trio of batarangs, one in each major joint. Tim, of course—he was fiercely protective of Steph. The thug howled, clutching his wounded arm, and Jason put him out with a tap on the head.

The three of them took care of the rest. Steph had a wicked right-handed knockout punch, Tim's bō made quite an impression, and Jason had long since perfected the art of using just enough of his strength to give a concussion. "Nice," he said once all the men were down and trussed up for the GCPD. "What'd you do to get their attention this time, R?"

"The usual," Steph cheerfully replied. "We intercepted a truckload of weapons before they could be sold. Not just ordinary guns, either—exotic stuff like plasma guns and military-grade lasers. Y'know, fancy."

"We're not sure who the buyer was, but given tonight's attack, it was probably Two-Face," Tim added. "And he's seeking revenge."

Jason shrugged. "They all want revenge. We just won't let any of them get it. Do you need me here? Because I've got a 7 AM class."

"No, we're good," Tim told him. "Wait a sec—SB, are you on the roster tonight?"

Grinning, Jason shook his head. "Nope. I just hate advanced calculus _that_ much." With that he took off running and leaped, clearing a thirty-story building easily.

"Sweet of him to come out and lend us a hand on a school night," Steph laughed.

Tim gave her one of his rare, open smiles. "Wouldn't _that_ be a new excuse for not finishing your homework?" On that note the pair of them returned to their rounds for the night. Robin and Spoiler, running rooftops under a hazy sky.

…

"You awake, _mi amore_?" Sebast called softly into the darkened hotel room.

Kala's reply was soft, but perfectly clear. "No. I'm asleep. I'm sound asleep, and I won't wake up if you take a shower and brush your teeth before you get anywhere near me."

"I can take a hint," he chuckled, and got himself cleaned up. Drying off, he put on boxers and an old, comfortable shirt, then paused to brush his teeth. The face that looked back at him from the mirror wasn't much changed from high school: he'd let his hair grow out again, his features were a little sharper now, and his goatee was a little longer. "Sebastiáno Vélez Manso, you are a sexy bastard," he purred at his reflection, stroking the goatee to a point.

"You're talking," Kala called from the bed. "I can't sleep if you're talking."

"_Ay_, woman, you talk in your sleep too much," he called back. "Besides I have to say a few words to the most beautiful person I know."

"You're in front of the mirror again, aren't you? I know _parakeets_ who are less obsessed with their reflections than you are. And they try to mate with the mirror."

"I would never do that. I can't risk damaging this handsome face—or any of my other parts—on broken glass."

"Shut up and come to bed, you impossibly vain man."

"Hey, if you're calling for me," Sebast teased. He padded barefoot into the other room, which in a hotel like this functioned as bedroom, living room, and dining room. There was only one bed, and Sebast pulled back the covers and burrowed in against Kala.

She grumbled and shifted, yelping when he pressed his cold nose to the back of her neck, and eventually they got comfortable snuggled together like two spoons in a drawer. Sebast slid his arm around her waist, the t-shirt she wore pulling up slightly so his wrist was against the bare skin of her belly. He sighed, his breath warming her shoulder.

Kala leaned back against him. "So, do I even dare ask what the flavor of the night was?"

"Ginger," Sebast murmured. "He had freckles everywhere. I mean _everywhere_. I've never seen a man with freckles on his thighs before. It kept distracting me. I wanted to find a pen and play connect-the-dots."

Her sides shook as she started to laugh, and Kala half-rolled over to look at him. "You … you are a repugnant human being, Sebast. You are _such_ a slut."

Sebast grinned at her affectionately. This wasn't a new conversation. "Hey, Trojans are made in the U.S.A. I'm supporting the American economy."

"That is the _worst_ justification for man-whoring I've ever heard in my life," Kala informed him. "Thank God I'm not sleeping with you."

"Um, _mami_, you are," Sebast said, chuckling.

"Ugh. You know what I mean. I _sleep_ with you; I just don't have sex with you." Kala rolled her eyes and started to kiss him good night, then hesitated. "Did you brush your teeth?"

In answer, Sebast huffed minty breath at her. "Yes. Now kiss me, beautiful."

'"Sometimes I don't know why I do," Kala muttered, and smooched him on the lips before curling back up on her side.

"And that's why you're my best friend," Sebast murmured, nuzzling into her hair again. "Because no matter how much whoring I do, I always come to bed with the same person every night, so I have some dignity and self-respect and all that. Plus you keep me warm even in the coldest winter."

Kala smiled to herself. None of the boys she'd dated made her feel half as safe as snuggling in Sebast's arms did. They'd been sharing a bed ever since they started touring, and it had never really been awkward. Considering the fact that he wasn't into girls, and she'd been platonically sharing sleeping space since the womb, that was no surprise. At first they got double rooms, and she and Sebast shared one bed while Morgan took the other. Morgan didn't particularly want flirtatious Sebast in the same bed with him, and Sebast pouted at the thought of Kala with Morgan, so they wound up together.

Lately, they were making enough money to have their own room, but neither of them saw any reason to start sleeping apart now, so they got a single and had more space. For Kala, it was comforting to sleep with a man's arms around her, hearing his breathing and pulse in the night whenever she woke in a strange hotel room. For Sebast, she was warm and cuddly, even if she did tend to sprawl all over the place like that weird-ass vine they saw down south—kudzu, that was the name of it.

Thinking that, he drifted to sleep. Kala was already unconscious.

…

"Are you two _still_ fighting over that story?" Lana said exasperatedly, having opened her door to Lois and Clark arguing in heated whispers. "It's _published_. Under joint bylines. Just let it _go_ already."

"He sniped it right out from under me!" Lois snapped.

"For goodness' sake, Lois, it was an _International_ story from the start!"

"Bull, it happened in Metropolis so it belongs to City!"

The two reporters eyed each other fiercely, neither one giving an inch. Life in the Lane-Kent household had been … interesting the past few days, with the two of them arguing almost from the second coffee in the morning until they turned the lights out at night. Lois and Clark never argued in bed, but there _had_ been a particularly enthusiastic 'I'll show _you_' vibe to their lovemaking lately.

Lana crossed her arms and glared at both of them. "You two _will_ behave like civilized adults in my home. If you're going to act like this, you can eat your breakfast on the balcony like a couple of misbehaving dogs."

At the last word, her ever-present shadow perked up, and Lana reached down to pet her. "Good girl, Cissa. You and Dusty are better trained than these reporters I keep inviting over for some unknown reason."

Clark sighed, knowing the threat wasn't in jest. He offered his hand to Lois and said, "Truce?"

She narrowed her eyes for a moment longer, but the scent of French toast was wafting out of the penthouse, and Lois couldn't resist. "Fine. Truce." She shook her husband's hand and then turned to the redhead. "Can we come in now? Or are you going to sic the guard dog on us?"

"Narcissa would never attack you," Lana said, still a little cross with them even as she held the door open. "She's far better behaved than _either_ of you, and Clark, I'm sad to say that." He looked appropriately abashed by the scolding.

Meanwhile, repetitions of her name were holding the dog's attention. After being attacked in her own home, Lana had wanted a larger dog. Dusty the beagle made a decent watch dog, if only because he tended to yodel loudly at new people in a bid for affection. A bigger dog might be something of a deterrent, and she'd browsed rescue websites and shelters looking for her favorite breed, a golden retriever. Or possibly an Irish setter. Richard and Lois both teased her about wanting a dog with flowing auburn locks to match her own hair.

Lana had gone to an adoption fair to look at a certain golden, and come home with a dog who was definitely red, but neither retriever nor setter. Her first choice had been snapped up by a trainer seeking a therapy dog, but the same rescue group had somehow persuaded her to look at another red dog they happened to have. And that was how Lana became the owner of the registered Doberman, Blackheart's Narcissa, known to her former owners as Cissy.

Richard and Lois wouldn't let Lana call a dog that size 'sissy', so she'd been rechristened Cissa. She turned out to be the perfect dog for Lana: elegant, refined, quiet, playful when invited, gentle with Dusty and Kristin, and very protective without being too aggressive. And of course, she was red, a glorious deep russet that looked good with everything Lana wore. Lois still teased her about being such a designer that everything she owned—or gave birth to, in Kristin's case—had to match.

The moment Lois and Clark stepped across the threshold, Dusty ran to them, industriously sniffing their legs for news of his cousins Bagel and Chewie. Cissa stepped out of his way and vanished up the hallway. "Is that a new painting?" Clark said, nodding at the brightly-colored canvas of camellias currently hanging in the foyer.

"Mm-hmm, it's a Caseria," Lana replied. "I've got two others—he does some gorgeous landscapes and florals. I can give you his card."

Lois knew oil from watercolor, but paintings of flowers weren't her style. It worked for Lana, of course. Momentarily ignoring the conversation, she rumpled Dusty's ears. "Who's a vicious attack dog? Yes, you are, never mind the big bad dobie, you're the vicious one, aren't you?" As soon as she took her hands off him, he leapt into the air at face height: too well trained to jump _on_ her, but too excited not to jump.

"Sometimes I regret the day Ben Hubbard put that puppy in front of Richard," Lana sighed, and then noticed that Cissa wasn't at her side.

At the same time she heard from the kitchen, "Here, eat this quick and don't tell your mom." Dusty, having a beagle's superior sense of impending food, dashed away.

"Richard!" Lana called. "I know you're feeding her!"

"No, I'm not," he called back.

"Yes, you are. The only time she leaves my side is when you bribe her."

That brought him out of the kitchen, looking surprised and a little hurt. "Hey! One, a piece of toast won't hurt. And two, I don't have to bribe her—she's _ours_."

"No, she isn't. She's mine. She even looks like me." Only then did Lana see Kristin standing behind him, frozen with a piece of French toast halfway in her mouth.

Kristin had been a cute kid, but at eleven, she was started to show hints of the beautiful young woman she would become. She had Lana's long, gorgeous hair, and Richard's electric blue eyes. Of course, at the moment she was all coltish legs, outgrowing clothes every time her parents turned around, but the potential was definitely there.

Lana sighed heavily. "Richard, I was talking about _Narcissa_, not Kristin. Kristin, honey, you're not in trouble." Lois snickered at her, and Kristin padded over to her Lo-Lo for a hug, getting a kiss from Lana on the way.

Richard had the grace to laugh. "Honey, confusing the dog and the kid? That's a bad sign. Clark, you know a good neurologist?"

"I'm sure it's just the stress of dealing with three reporters under the same roof," Clark said charitably.

"That's why my hair is this color," Lana said, pointing to the streaks of white at her temples.

"Stop your whining," Lois teased her, elbowing Lana lightly. "You've only got to deal with three. This is what happens when you have a whole damn newspaper full of reporters: I gave up and went gray."

Clark scoffed. "Went gray? More like went to the salon and had them strip the dye from it, with no warning for you poor husband. You just left work black-haired, and came home after an 'important meeting' with silver."

Lois just stared at him, remembering that afternoon with perfect clarity. It had been a risk, she had known it would be a risk, but it had had to be done. And how better to deal than just had it over and done with before she had begun to look foolish? But she had been so nervous of his reaction. "I told you that night; I wanted an unbiased reaction," she said, smirking slightly.

"Well, you got one," Clark shot back. "And then we had to get a new kitchen table."

Richard burst out laughing at that, and Lana rolled her eyes. Lois looked archly at her husband, trying not to smile at all, and then looked at Kristin, who turned to Clark in confusion. "How come you had to get a new table 'cause Lo-Lo dyed her hair?"

"Actually it was because she stopped dyeing her hair. And she scared me so bad I broke the table running away." Kristin giggled at that.

It was a whopper of a lie from Clark, and Lana had to leave the room to keep from bursting out laughing. "Richard, you're letting the toast burn," she said to excuse her sudden disappearance. "Kristin, honey, come help Mommy?" The little redhead ran to her side, always eager to help someone if food was involved.

"Be there in a second," Richard called to her, and then pointed the spatula at Clark. "That's not how I remember hearing it. Clark, you're such an undercover freak."

"Coming from you, Richard, that's a compliment," Clark replied with a grin.

The conversation had achieved one thing: Lois and Clark weren't glaring at each other anymore, and as they went into the kitchen to help get set up for their weekly breakfast at the Whites', Lois linked her arm through Clark's and smiled at him. "So I guess this means that you still think I'm a one hell of a catch, even though I'm not twenty-five anymore?" she asked lightly.

Clark kissed her forehead. "You'll always be a catch, Lois. Even from forty stories up. I just hope I stay fast enough to catch you."


	3. Can't Always Go Home Again

**Stayed up waaaay too late finishing this guy. I have GOT to crash. See how much I love all of you? *faceplant at desk***

* * *

><p>Elise stared at the molecular structure in front of her. She was missing a hydrogen atom somewhere. There should've been five of them in this compound, but her diagram had four that she could see and no space for another. <em>Am I losing my mind?<em> It wasn't the first time this semester she'd thought that. Diagramming complex molecular structures occasionally made her rethink her choice of major.

"Hey everybody," a cheerful and familiar voice called into the campus pizza parlor where Elise had taken her homework. "Someone said I could find a hot brunette rocket scientist around here?"

An opening like that surely had everyone's attention. There was absolutely no mistaking that sing-songy voice, either, and the girl fought the reluctant smile she felt forming. To be truthful, she'd actually missed it since she'd moved out here. And not just because the voice's owner brought a breath of home with her. Sighing, Elise sat up and shook her head. "Chem, not physics, for the hundredth time," she said drolly without actually looking around.

"Oooh, even better," Kala laughed, strolling over to plop down in the other side of the booth. "Rocket scientists are so last year; mad scientists, now, they're all the rage this season."

The usual wave of affection swept through her then. Some things never changed; Kala being Kala was a constant in a currently-unpredictable new world. "You're impossible." Elise couldn't help a smile when she said it.

Kala leaned toward her and said in a low voice, "Hey, you and I know that I'm too perfect to exist, but don't tell the crowd, okay?"

Elise dissolved into laughter. How could she not, with Kala's irrepressible smile and the devilish gleam in her eyes? In the last three years, Kala had become more polished, more Goth if that was possible, but her off-the-wall sense of humor hadn't changed a bit. When she could stop snickering, she managed to say, "You, perfect? If I admitted that I'd have to give up my claim to the title."

"Touché. And that would be a damn shame for all of us." Kala shrugged, and picked up a slice of Elise's pizza. "Mmm, mushrooms and olives. God, I miss that. You're my new best friend."

"I was always one of your best friends, and you're a shameless mooch. Hands off my lunch." She swatted Kala's hand when the other girl playfully reached for another slice. "What brings you randomly to sunny California this afternoon?"

"Gothapalooza, of course. Not like you haven't been hearing about this on and off for a month." Elise stifled more laughter; the tour had an actual name, but every band involved mocked it. "We were in Texas, and I figured we're halfway here, so I might as well take an evening and come see you. Besides, our newest member made the mistake of saying Sebast can't hook up in a cow town."

Elise groaned at that. "Oh my God. He'll be lucky if he doesn't get _shot_. Why did you even let him run loose?"

Kala snorted and rolled her eyes. "Like I could stop him. Sebast thinks he's a force of nature. Besides, if he can hook up in a backwoods Alabama gas station, he can hook up anywhere. There's a reason we always have a bottle of Listerine in the glove box."

"Wait, wait. Alabama? _Backwoods_ Alabama? How the hell…?"

She shrugged. "Don't ask. He's the Queerfinder; it's like his superpower or something. We stopped for gas and he went in for smokes. Next thing I know, the 'Open' sign is off and he's gone for half an hour. Morgan and I were just about to call the cops when he strolled out. _And_ he didn't pay for the smokes."

"Oh my God! Is he still pulling that high school bullshit?" Elise clearly remembered asking Sebast one time how he always managed to have cigarettes and condoms and the occasional beer. He had winked and told her about two different boyfriends who worked in convenience stores.

"Only occasionally. Besides, he probably only did it because it was an hour from the highway in _Alabama_, of all places. The guy's name was Dwight. Sebast had to have a souvenir, so he wheedled the smokes. Freakin' Marlboros, too. I _hate_ those."

Elise rested her face in her palms. "Sebast is … there are no words for Sebast."

"No, there are words, just not polite ones. And a lot of gestures, too." They shared a chuckle at that, and Kala added, "Sebast is just trying to find himself. In every man he meets."

"Has he at least given up on Morgan?" Elise asked.

"Officially, yes. Unofficially, I believe we're at 'as long as we're both still breathing I have a chance' status."

"You know, if you and Morgan…" Elise began, but Kala shook her head briskly.

"Nuh-uh. Sebast met him first, and we don't poach on each other's men. Remember how that worked out sophomore year?" Another snicker, and Kala continued, "Besides, I might just have another option open."

"Oh really? Do tell." Elise leaned forward.

"Try half-Japanese, carries a freakin' _katana_ around everywhere, speaks five languages, _and_ he's a singer." Kala smirked. "Oh yeah, and Allen is Shinto. I am officially dating a pagan guy."

"Still won't shock your mom," Elise pointed out. "She's unshockable, Kala."

"It's not about shocking Mom. It's about being around a guy who probably _won't_ ask me to judge an armpit-farting contest. You know, something that's been lacking in my life since Nick left."

"You've been spending too much time around these boys," Elise teased.

"Try occasional fourteen-hour-drives in the van with them. I've come to the conclusion that the vast majority of the male population under the age of 30 is just disgusting. Which is why, if Allen doesn't work out, I'm coming back to California to lure you back into the family." With that she batted her eyelashes melodramatically.

Elise heaved a deep sigh. "At least you acknowledge that I'm not dating your brother right now. _He_ doesn't."

A uncomfortable silence followed that statement, Kala looking away with a sigh. No surprise there, a moment of regret pricking Elise sharply. That had been a little too blunt maybe. While Kala agreed that her twin was far too serious on the topic, it was bound to be just as painful for her. No one had been a bigger cheerleader of their relationship. It was a relief when the other girl finally cleared her throat. "Are you surprised?" Kala asked sardonically.

"I had to ask him to change his Facebook relationship status three times! I had to threaten to post it on his wall before he actually did it."

Kala just shrugged. "I guess it just takes some people longer to get over things than others.

"That's not fair," Elise shot back. "It's not that I want to get over him. It's that—we were _fourteen_! Hell, we were sixteen when we got back together, and he's already planning the wedding."

"You know, Elise, if you're gonna keep on with the 'we can't be together' thing, you have to find some new excuses."

Elise glared at her. "Shouldn't _he_ be the one saying he wants to play the field before we settle down?"

"Why? He's smart enough to know when he's onto a good thing. There's no rule that says you have to have a horrible relationship before you can appreciate a good one. That's just movies. Besides, if you want to see the rest of the world, try all the cuisine before you marry a nice boy, you should get on with it already."

"I am, actually," Elise replied icily.

That was enough to rock Kala back on her heels. Another silence, those hazel eyes wide with an aggravated surprise Elise knew all too familiarly. They just stared at each other, neither venturing a peep. No surprise who broke it first. Kala gritted her teeth and narrowed her eyes. "Wow. This is news. We've been talking once a week and this was never even alluded to. You weren't even going to tell _me_?"

For one second, Elise wanted to snap back at her. Kala did entirely too much meddling in her love life; she knew perfectly well that the dark-haired girl thought she and Jason were idiots for not getting on with it already. She meant well, she truly did, but she'd never learned not to give unwanted advice.

Still, they'd been friends a long time, and Kala's temper was hotter than hers. A fight was the last thing either of them wanted with their visits so limited. So Elise swallowed her initial grumpy response and said calmly, "No, I hadn't told you because I'm going on my first date with Corrin this weekend. So I figured I'd catch you up on Sunday if there was anything to tell, and if it fizzles, then there's really nothing to tell."

Somewhat mollified, Kala leaned her elbows on the table. Yeah, the news wasn't exactly what she had wanted to hear, but they both knew the ways of relationships. Only the little frown between her brows hinted at her loyalties. "Corrin, huh? What's he like?"

"I don't _know_. This girl in my chem lab, he's her brother's friend. She set us up. For all I know he could be a complete waste of my time."

"But you _will_ keep me posted, right?" Kala asked, giving her a tiny smile. "Because if he doesn't treat you right, I'm gonna come out here and kick his ass."

Elise sighed. "Kala, I can kick his ass _myself_. I don't need your blue belt assistance, or any _other_ assistance you had in mind to provide. I appreciate it, I really do, but you don't have to."

Kala stared at her for a long moment, then offered her fist, knuckles toward Elise. "Okay, fine. Just remember, whether you ever get around to marrying my brother, we both know you'll always be kind of a sister to me, okay? God knows you know all the family secrets. And you were mine first and don't you forget it."

Chuckling again, Elise fist-bumped her. Leave it to Kala to phrase it that way. "Sure thing. Besides, Kala, no matter what happens from here on out, I'll never lose touch with you." She lowered her voice to add, "Friends who can bring you fresh bagels in Berkeley—from your favorite deli in Metropolis—are a thing to be cherished."

At that, Kala tipped her head back and laughed openly.

It was wonderful to see her again, and the evening hanging out did Elise a lot of good. She'd needed to relax for a little while. But thinking back on what they had said, their discussion stayed with her. As usual, Kala left her with as many questions as answers.

Especially that thing about new excuses. _That_ had burned. It was still the same problem: Jason was absolutely, utterly sure that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Elise. It wouldn't surprise her to find out that he'd tentatively named a couple of their kids. Love, marriage, children, he had it all figured out.

She'd actually started to think it was a good idea. By senior year, Elise had lulled herself into seriously thinking about marriage and everything else. They were lovers by then, and she'd never been so intimate with anyone, or so comfortable with that level of intimacy. It just felt right with him, and not just the physical side of things. That was nice enough—more than nice enough, and she _did_ miss it—but it was the falling asleep in his arms and waking up to his ridiculous sleepy-bear face that tugged at her heart. Missing him was a physical ache most days. After all, Jason knew her like no one else, and she was the only person outside his family who knew the whole truth about him. They had so much in common that they seemed destined for each other. It would be so easy, so _right_, to take up her destiny with him.

_But_, nothing in life was ever perfect, and she didn't trust anything that felt so easy. The first stumbling block had been choosing college on opposite coasts. Jason's first choice of school was Johns Hopkins, and he had the grades to get in. Yet when he found out she was looking at Berkeley, he'd been all too willing to change schools just to be with her. Elise had vetoed that automatically, without examining why at the time.

Only recently, when she saw the big headline unveiling Superboy to the world, did she realize what was _really_ wrong. It wasn't that she didn't trust perfection. The simple fact was, she could easily settle in with him and have a happy life at Jason's side. But Elise didn't want to just be a superhero's wife. Sure, for other people that was probably an achievement in itself, but she wanted a doctorate, a career, a chance to change the world in her own way. Maybe even to save the world, a little bit, not with superpowers that were an accident of birth, but with the knowledge and experience she was etching into her brain every day.

When she looked at that article, Elise wondered if she could have both. Or would that feeling of rightness just make her dreams fade away? Sure, she'd be happy with Jason, but she didn't want to be known just as the woman who sewed up his cape and raised his kids. Look at Lois—she had a career and a standing of her own. Everyone in the caped community probably knew she was Superman's wife, but they referred to her as the media liaison for or as the editor of the _Daily Planet_. She was no one's little woman. And Elise was close enough to her to know just how dearly she'd paid for that independent recognition.

Elise didn't know if she was strong enough to be Dr. Thorne when the easy, comfortable, safe, and _happy_ role of Mrs. Superboy was sitting right there waiting for her. Did she have the determination to choose the harder road? Or would she wind up just being a satellite orbiting his planet?

Right around then, she realized she'd framed the question in cosmology terms, _his major_, and groaned. No, if she and Jason were ever going to work out, she had to know first if she could achieve her goals on her own. She had to be Elise Thorne before she could be Mrs. Jason Kent.

And if he didn't see that, well, she didn't want to hurt him by explaining it in plain terms. Jason would never, ever think of her as a footnote to himself. Elise knew that very well. And it wasn't so much the opinions of others that worried her, in the end. It was her own mind, her own goals, her own self-image that she was concerned with. If she couldn't stand apart from him, how on Earth could she stand beside him when he was growing into his legacy as a superhero? He was the son of _Superman_! An ordinary girl would get swept up and lost in that, and Elise had to prove to herself that she was way more than ordinary before she could risk losing herself in him again.

Not exactly the best thoughts to have right before bed, but Elise rolled over and recited the periodic table—with atomic weights—until she fell asleep. And when she dreamed, it was of trying to glue atoms together into molecules instead of wistful fantasies of the life she could be leading.

…

Jason sat in Tim's chair in Titans Tower, cradled his head in his hands, and sighed deeply. "This _sucks_," he muttered.

Cassie rumpled his hair as she walked past. "Tough it out. Besides, now we can tell Tim we really, really missed him."

He just looked askance at her. "Don't _ever_ leave me to settle an argument between Arrowette and Kid Flash again. That wasn't my idea of fun."

She dropped into the chair across from him and put her feet up on the console. "Jason, I _couldn't_ stay. Everyone knows Cissie and I are friends. No matter what I said, I'd be screwed. If I sided with him, she'd be hurt. If I sided with her, he'd say I was playing favorites."

"Tim ought to be here," Jason grumbled. "He could've pulled out one of his great 'I am Robin, hear me roar' moments and made them both shut up."

"No, Cissie would snark at him on principle, and then you'd have to break _that_ up, and neither of us can claim we're unbiased where Tim's concerned," Cassie pointed out.

Jason shook his head. "The girls are less obnoxious about family rivalries than the guys. I mean, Steph and Cissie get along."

"Which just proves women are smarter than men." Cassie grinned at him, clearly trying to lighten his mood.

It worked, a little. "Yeah, right. Sounds like you spent a little too much time on Themyscira. Back off the hard-core feminism. We're about equality around here."

"This from the son of Lois Lane?" Cassie teased, smirking. Kicked back in her chair and with her feet propped up, she had a lot of denim-clad leg on display. Quite spectacular leg, at that, but Jason _was_ the son of Lois Lane and didn't stare.

He also didn't comment. "Whatever. I wish Tim wasn't holed up in Gotham."

Cassie shrugged. "Well, so do I, but the Big Bat has put all his kiddies on curfew. He's paranoid as hell about this Red Hood guy. You ask me, the _sensible_ thing to do would be to let us _help_. The guy is good with guns, so why not bring in a couple of bulletproof people to play tag with him? The detectives can find him, you and I can help smack him down. Teamwork, and everybody wins."

"When Uncle Bruce perceives a threat, he goes on lockdown," Jason said. "On some level, he doesn't trust anyone other than himself and his kids to take care of Gotham."

"Yeah, but you trained with him. Why won't he let you in?"

"I'm not a Bat. Cassie, sometimes I think the only reason he lets the Birds of Prey operate in Gotham is because he needs Oracle's resources."

"So very true," Cassie sighed. "Well, what else can we do? If we sneak into Gotham, he'll flambé us. _And_ report it to the League. It's bad enough I still have to worry about Mom cramping my super-style; I don't need Batman getting me in trouble with Diana too."

"If it gets bad enough, she and Dad will lean on him," Jason said. "For now, he has it under control. They'll take care of this new guy, the power balance in Gotham will settle down, and everything will be back to normal." At least, that was how he hoped it would go.

Cassie swiveled her chair back and forth in a short arc. "Yeah, and that's not all that's wrong with you. You're _brooding_, and that's Tim's forte. Something else is up, something personal. Spill, Superboy."

"Tim being on lockdown in Gotham with this maniac is personal," Jason insisted.

She didn't quite dismiss that, but she could be annoyingly perceptive. "He's Red Robin. He'll kick ass and take names like usual. What's going on in the civilian side of your life?"

"It's nothing," he said, trying to shrug her off, but Cassie was too good a friend to let him, and he knew it. After a moment of staring expectantly, she kicked his chair, and he glared in aggravation. "Okay, fine. It's personal. I just found out Elise is dating some guy in California." Kala had, of course, texted him and warned him not to panic.

"Isn't she your ex?" Cassie asked.

Jason huffed out an angry sigh. Nobody got it; he wondered why he kept being surprised. "No, we're just taking a break. We've spent more time on break than in a relationship, I think. I'm ready for the break to be over, and she's dating other guys."

"That's kind of what taking a break _means_, Jason. Was the phrase 'see other people' ever used? Or 'explore our options'?"

"By her," he admitted grumpily.

"Do you know why she wanted to take a break?"

He paused for a long moment before grumbling, "She's afraid of getting committed so soon. She thinks we're too young to be serious, and she wants to make sure this is what she wants forever before she commits."

"Oh, and you're perfect and she can't possibly find anyone else this good, so she should shut up and marry you already?" Cassie shot back.

"No! That's not how it is," Jason snapped. "She's _happy_ with me, Cassie. I think she's scared of being that happy. Someone told her you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince, and she just wants to make sure she kisses enough frogs to fill her statistical quota."

"In other words, she's a realist and doesn't believe she found her Happily Ever After in high school," Cassie commented. Jason just glowered.

She sighed and rolled her eyes. "You are _so_ hung up on this girl, Jason. Maybe you should quit chasing her if she's so dead-set on running away?"

"_No_," he retorted immediately, and with enough force that Cassie looked startled. "She's the one, Cassie. _The one_. If I try to imagine the perfect girl for me, she's _exactly_ what I'd picture. She's just … amazing. And Mom and Dad like her—even _Kala_ likes her, and she's normally evil to all my girlfriends."

"How many other girlfriends have you had, anyway?" Cassie asked. She was swiveling the chair again, and Jason was coming to recognize that as a sign of impending interference.

"Enough," he said shortly.

"I'm looking for a number between two and two hundred here, Super-stubborn," Cassie said.

"_Enough_. Four or five." A lot less than some Titans, and quite a few more than his father had had.

"And how many of those were high school?"

The answer was all of them, and they both knew it. "What's your point?"

Cassie leaned forward and looked at him seriously out of blue eyes that were almost exactly the same shade as his own. "Look, Jason. All I'm saying is maybe you should actually think about taking this break seriously. I know you love her, but maybe you _should_ look around at your other options a little."

"Cassie, I know most people don't fall in love with someone when they're young and stay in love forever and ever. If that was true, I'd probably have red hair," he replied, trying very hard not to let his annoyance show. "But I'm not being blind. I _love_ Elise. The last time we broke up, I dated someone else, and it failed miserably. She was a spy for Luthor."

"Not every girl is a spy, Jason."

"No, but it's just not worth it, Cassie. Elise _knows_ me, and I know I can trust her. All the girls I meet when I'm out saving people are just chasing the cape. They don't know me. And all the girls I meet in college and stuff, I have to keep secrets from them, and that's no way to start a relationship."

Cassie was starting to look as though she couldn't quite believe what he was saying. "Okay, I kind of understand not wanting to date civilians. Keeping secrets sucks, and most of them don't really get what we do. And the cape-chasing is annoying. The attention can be nice, but it gets old. No one wants to be wanted for their powers."

"Exactly!" Jason exclaimed. "I'm kind of worried about a girl who wants to date Superboy, anyway. As far as the world knows, he's got no family, no job, no concept of a normal life. _And_ he's constantly out saving the world."

"With a bunch of girls in tight pants, if they wear pants at all," Cassie added, grinning. She got serious again to add, "Plus you've got the same problems I do—exactly when are you supposed to tell someone you're half human? That's not something you save for the pre-nup, but it's definitely not first-date material, either. It just makes dating _weird_."

"You get it," Jason said, relieved. "You really get it. And see, Elise knows all that stuff, and it doesn't freak her out. I mean, she's a scientist too. She's more interested in figuring out how Kryptonians and humans are genetically compatible than in getting all weirded out by me being part alien."

Cassie gave a heartfelt sigh. "Trust me, I get it. But you know, there _is_ another option."

"Become a monk?" Jason said.

She snickered. "No, Super-dense. _Date a cape._ I mean, we've got quite a few of them running around these days."

He blinked. The thought had honestly never occurred to him. Jason considered his fellow Titans to be more than just colleagues. They had to entrust their safety, their _lives_, to one another quite often. Relationship drama was the _last_ thing they needed. "Yeah, no way. Office romances never work out, and when they flame out, everyone around gets burned. Trying to date another Titan would be like that times ten."

Cassie raised one eyebrow at him. "Okay, I'm going to have blow your logical fallacies out of the water here. Number one: your parents met at work, both ways around, and _everyone_ wants a relationship like that. Number two: why automatically assume it's going to flame out horribly? Which leads me to number three: other heroes have had stable, happy relationships with other capes."

"What, like Dick and Kory? Or Uncle Bruce and Diana?" Jason scoffed.

"No, don't even try to count Batman. He's got an on-again off-again thing with that Talia al-Ghul, for crying out loud. I mean like Barda and Scott, or Arthur and Mera, or … hell, your parents ought to count. Your mother sure isn't a civilian."

"My parents aren't the happy-ever-after you think they are," Jason warned. "For starters, _I_ was the ring-bearer at their wedding. And we had some pretty major fireworks over the years. Sure, they're a Hallmark card _now_, but it wasn't always all roses and puppies. The crap that went down before Nevada ended up with both of them dropping divorce on the table."

Cassie sighed heavily. "Yeah, but they didn't split up, and they're the definition of super-couple. My point is, it _can_ work. And maybe instead of moping around pathetically, you should give it a shot. I'm not saying you should propose marriage to a girl and then go sleep with your first love like a certain someone did. Just go on a couple dates. It might even be fun."

"I'll think about it," Jason said, knowing he wouldn't. On top of all his other objections, on top of the fact that he just didn't _want_ to date anyone else, he was one of the unofficial leaders of the Titans. Any relationship he had could cause accusations of favoritism from the rest.

"You do that," Cassie said. "It'd be worth it just to see you _smile_ once in a while. See you later." With that she got up, tousled his hair roughly, and headed out.

Smoothing his hair back with a frown—what was it with girls always wanting to mess up his hair?—he called, "Yeah, see you!"

From the hallway, she called back, "Who knows? Maybe if you pull your head out of the clouds and look around, you might just find someone who suits you better than Elise."

He laughed, muttering, "I doubt it," as he went back to scanning the case log.

…

Clark was gone during lunch, and Lois took advantage of his absence to talk to his pet reporter, letting her know there might be an opportunity opening in the City department, where all the _real_ stories were. After all, she was an extremely talented young woman, and Lois hated to see her languishing in International. Unfortunately Krista saw through her and wasn't interested in switching departments. Luckily for both of them, she phrased her refusal with the same grace that had led to her _sharing_ Phil's byline on the story Clark had sent her to steal from him a while back.

Lois took the setback diplomatically, in spite of Perry chortling at her. After all, a little competitiveness between departments kept everyone sharp. And besides, Lois and Clark had a stern rule: infighting in the office _stayed_ in the office. At home was totally different. She didn't snark at him about stealing her stories once they got home, and he didn't tease her about trying to steal his reporter in the elevator after work.

Actually, he should've at least smirked at her about it. Lois eyed him warily, wondering what the deal was with lunch. Normally she could figure out where her husband was by watching the news, but not today. Kal-El was awfully subdued, which generally meant bad news. "What's up?" she asked as they walked to the car.

"I'll tell you when we get home," was all he would say, and Lois somehow managed to wait. She knew him in all his moods, and closed-off was only one of them when something seriously bad had gone down. She knew she'd hear it—she was his chronicler and confidant from their earliest days together, and more than a decade of marriage had only brought them closer.

Home, and the dogs needed to be let out, and the answering machine light was blinking, and Kala must've snuck in during the day because there were dishes in the sink, but none of that mattered to her husband. He caught Lois by the hips, lifted her up so she was sitting on the counter, and leaned his head against her shoulder with a long sigh. She ran her fingers through his hair, soothing him, and wrapped her legs around his waist. His hands were under her jacket, pressed against the small of her back. Whenever he was stressed or depressed or otherwise drastically out of whack, Kal-El sought comfort in closeness, as much contact as he could get.

"Tell me," Lois murmured, kissing his temple.

"Bruce found out who's been slaughtering the drug dealers in Gotham," he replied, his breath warm against her skin.

"Who?" she asked. She'd been hearing about this new villain for a little while, someone smart and deadly and damn well-trained, someone who'd gotten away from Bruce more than once. Someone who thought nothing of killing a bunch of drug lords' lieutenants just to make a point. He was in on the drugs and the weapons and everything else, making himself a major player in Gotham City and provoking all the usual gang of crooks in the process. This Red Hood guy was really getting himself onto Bat-clan's shit list in a big way.

Kal-El sighed, that terrible heavy sigh. Lois hated it; he let himself carry far too much responsibility and guilt, especially for things that weren't his fault. And Bruce had refused outside help from the first time he encountered the new guy. The Bat could stonewall with the best of them, but sometimes he took it too far.

"If Bruce knows, I damn sure hope he told you, or I'm going over there and he can tell _me_," Lois muttered darkly.

Kal-El's voice was low and desolate when he answered her. "It's his son. It's Jason Todd."

She froze. The boy who shared her son's name had haunted her for years. When he died, Bruce went off the rails. Oh, not like any normal person. Bruce had gone cold and dark and silent, and since he was _already_ pretty goddamned grimdark, that was a frightening thing to see. He blamed himself, and he wouldn't let anyone help him shoulder that burden. Kal-El had tried, Diana had tried, and Lois knew both of them had been bluntly rebuffed. The loss of Jason Todd was a wound in Bruce's soul that no one could heal, not even Tim Drake. Tim was the one who kept Bruce functioning and sane—_Batman needs a Robin_—but he wasn't healed.

And now, he was back. Alive, somehow, but Lois had seen stranger things and his reappearance wasn't what shocked her. Finding a former Robin on the wrong side of the law was more surprising than the dead returning to life. "Wait, _what_? Is he sure?"

"Jay made sure of it. He gave Bruce blood, hair, and tissue, and all of it tested a 100% match in the Batcave computer."

"How is that even possible?" Lois asked, still trying to wrap her mind around the idea of someone with Bruce's training going on a crime spree.

"I have no idea. Lois, I'm worried for Bruce." He huffed a short laugh, and added dismally, "I'm more worried for _Jay_. I remember the boy. Bruce says he should've seen this coming, that Jay would've turned to a life of crime if he hadn't intervened. All I saw was a bright, mischievous boy who'd been dealt a bad hand in life. What happened to him to cause this? And more importantly, can we save him?"

Lois hugged him tight, pressing her cheek against his. "I don't know, Kal-El," she whispered, wishing she had a better answer—or any answer—for him. All she could do for now was hold him close and be the shoulder he leaned on.


	4. The Tiny Threads That Connect

**Despite a few drawbacks this week, here we are. We also have a cast list for the newer heroes that you're meeting that will grow as time goes on. It'll be posted over at the Livejournal, as I can't post it here. ;)  
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><p>It was a lovely Saturday afternoon for a day out with the girls, and after the news she'd heard earlier in the week, Lois needed it. The situation in Gotham was never far from her mind, or from Clark's. He was gone more after, trying to keep an eye on Bruce, and when he was home his mind was still in Gotham City. But she couldn't dwell on that; there was nothing she could do at the moment, so she had to keep up appearances and live in the moment. Which that afternoon meant going for their regular girls'-night-out.<p>

Lois sometimes marveled at the fact that she'd been able to maintain such long-standing friendships. Lucy was her sister, of course and Lana—well, she couldn't get away from Lana, given the way the family was arranged, even if she wanted to. Cat Grant and Tobie Raines had known her since college, and if they hadn't driven each other away with their competitiveness by now, it wasn't going to happen. And the friendship between a police inspector and a reporter had yielded too many clues to too many cases, so in spite of their occasional arguments about ethics, Maggie Sawyer wasn't going anywhere.

Still, it amazed her sometimes. Lois didn't consider herself good at relationships of any kind; she knew she'd gotten lucky finding Clark. Star-crossed as all hell, with everything they'd been through, but still lucky. Richard was a major stroke of luck, too. There weren't many men in the world who would love a woman enough to propose to her, and then love her still more to let her go. Privately she guessed she'd done something amazing in a previous life or something to have so many people who cared so deeply about her.

But this wasn't the moment for reflecting. "Pull!" Lois called, bringing Maggie's Browning Citori 725 over-and-under shotgun to her shoulder. Luckily for her, it had almost no kick; that right shoulder didn't need any unnecessary stress. Behind her, Maggie pressed the button that launched the clays—two this time. Lois tracked the low target and blasted it out of the sky with the little visceral thrill that skeet-shooting always gave her, then followed up on the high one. She had to hurry to make the double, but managed to break the second clay.

"Nice," Maggie said, and Lois moved to the eighth station for her final two shots of this round. They didn't always get out to the skeet club Maggie belonged to, but when they did, she was one of the better shooters. The rule was that the winner had to buy dinner for everyone, and Lois found herself paying quite often.

Lois missed the low shot at station eight, and swore pungently. Since it was the first one she'd missed, she got to re-shoot it, and blasted the clay target with especial vengeance. Then she handed the gun over to Tobie for her turn and joined the group who'd already shot or were still waiting to go.

Cat, who'd gotten a double this time and was still excited about it, beamed at Lois. "When the zombie apocalypse comes, I'm hiding at your place."

"Nope, I finally kicked the kids out, I'm not letting you move in and eat us out of house and home," Lois retorted. "If the dead start walking the earth, go freeload with Mags and Tobe. They have more guns, anyway."

"Yeah, but you have the penthouse. It'll be a lot easier just barricading the stairwell," Cat replied.

"Someone's been watching too many horror movies," Lucy chuckled.

Cat rolled her eyes. "Blame Richard. He's the one who waxed poetic to Ian about _28 Days Later_. In the last two weeks I've seen that, the sequel, _Shaun of the Dead_, a couple of older films I don't even remember, and now he's recording _The Walking Dead_. It's gotten so I feel weird if I _don't _dream about zombies attacking the city."

Lois couldn't help chuckling while Lana apologized. Richard's love of horror films was her favorite target of blame for Kala being Goth, and now it looked like he had something else to answer for.

Finally shrugging, Cat said, "It could be worse. Ian could be stuck on German Expressionist films again. I do love him, but I'm starting to think all film geeks should have a warning label just so we know what we're getting into. I can't rent a movie anymore without thinking about the cinematography and how the director is expressing his particular style."

They all shared a chuckle at that, and then Lana remarked, "Cat, you said you wanted to ask us all something when Lois got done shooting. What was that?"

"Well…." Cat trailed off, looking over at Tobie, who had worked her way through the stations during the conversation. Skeet was a relatively quick sport, especially for experienced shooters. Tobie had just missed a double and cursed in aggravation. "Okay, I don't want Tobe to feel left out, but you guys all have some qualifications that she doesn't. So … do you think I'd be a good mom?"

Lucy, Lois, and Lana all looked at each other for a moment in utter surprise, and even Maggie turned her head from where she was managing the trigger on the traps. That made Tobie look around, too, and she lowered the gun to call, "_What?_ Jeez, woman, don't tell me you're pregnant."

"How did you hear that with a shotgun next to your ear?" Cat complained.

The brunette kept the gun pointed at the ground as she turned around and propped her free hand on her hip. "I didn't need to hear you. I felt a disturbance in the freakin' force. Whatever happened to Cat the wild and free, no commitments, you'll date the guy for _years_ but you won't marry him because it'll ruin the relationship?"

"Ian and I aren't getting married. And I'm not pregnant," Cat retorted, blushing. "See, this is why I didn't want to tell you. You're just going to be an ass."

"You also suck as a reporter," Lois jeered. Any time was a good time to refresh their rivalry. "If you hadn't been an editor so long, you'd remember Cat did that piece last month on those kids with disabilities that are stuck in foster care. You thinking of adopting, Cat?"

The blonde sighed. "Well, there was this little boy. Adam. He was in the second segment, and he's just the sweetest thing. And I remember some ASL from that one guy I dated who was deaf—you remember, right? So I could talk to Adam some in between takes, and I think we really connected. And…." She shrugged helplessly.

The other five women shared a significant glance. "Go for it," Tobie finally said. By that point no one was especially interested in finishing the round, and no one else was waiting to use the skeet range. "I mean, if you're still thinking about him a month later, it means he's really important to you. Me, I've never really been into the kid thing, but I think you'd be good at it."

Lucy mused, "You do have a way with kids. Lo's twins never went to anybody they didn't know, at first, but the day they got here you were carrying Jason around like his long-lost aunt."

"You should do it," Lois affirmed. The idea of freewheeling Cat with a child was kind of mind-bending, but not in a bad way. She'd done a lot of growing up in the last ten years or so: getting sober, advancing her career, actually staying in a relationship for more than a few months.

Cat was still fretting though. "I don't know. I mean, I don't know the first thing about raising a child. Looking after you guys' kids for a few minutes or a few hours is nothing, I'm pretty sure I won't break them and I can always send them back to you, but adopting a child is a huge, huge commitment. I'm not thirty anymore, either. And I don't have any way of knowing if I'll be any good at it! I just … I don't know how to be a mom. "

Lana put an arm around her shoulders, leaned in close, and stage-whispered in conspiratorial tones, "Neither did we, but our kids survived."

That got them all laughing. Finally Lois said, "Motherhood is the one test where you're _encouraged_ to crib off everyone else's answers, Cat. And you've got all of us to ask for advice."

"Including how not to panic when your kid comes home from college and casually announces she's moving in with her boyfriend next semester," Maggie said, arching an eyebrow. Jamie Sawyer's romance with Lee Escobar, an engineering major she'd met on campus, had been the topic of the day at their last meeting.

"Yeah, Adam's nine. Girls still have cooties. I think I've got a ways to go before worrying about him moving in with anyone else," Cat joked.

"Oh, I miss the cooties stage," Lucy sighed. "Michelle's just now discovering that boys are the same species. Nora's getting married this year, and Sam's talking about having a baby. I don't think Sarah's quite ready yet, but he is. And then every time Joanna calls she's talking about someone new."

"Well, she _is_ traveling a lot," Lana said.

Lucy sighed. "Yeah, when your ambition is to paint every inspiring coastline from Maine to the Florida Keys, I guess romance takes second best. Oh, speaking of the artist lives-like-a-gypsy gene, hey Lois, what's new with Kala?"

Lois groaned. "So I hear the new one's named Alan, and his idea of date-night conversation is telling my daughter all about his sword collection…."

…

_There's nothing like an audience yelling your name,_ Kala thought. She felt super-charged, like she'd been sunbathing for hours, rolling on the adrenaline rush. Sebast and the boys were scattering to their various vices, and Kala smiled wickedly as she took off her own makeup and changed into plainclothes. After being in a corset for the last five hours, that meant jeans and an off-the-shoulder blouse, clothes she could _breathe _in. The she headed backstage to find Alan.

He'd finished his set earlier; her group was gaining popularity, so they sang later in the night. By the time Kala got to him, Alan had ditched the stage makeup and was halfway through a bottle of his favorite beer. "Well, hello beautiful," he said at the sight of her, a broad smile curving his mouth.

"Hello yourself," Kala laughed, and kissed him. She was still wearing boots, so she didn't have to stand on tiptoe to do it. Alan frowned slightly; Kala knew he was touchy about his height. He'd once proclaimed that he would never, ever date a girl taller than himself. She thought five feet ten was perfectly respectable for a guy, even if it was only a little more than her own height.

Kala let her knees go a little slack and her shoulders fall rounded, just enough so Alan wouldn't notice she was easily looking him in the eye. She'd learned that trick from her father. To further distract her boyfriend, she said, "Well, we're free for two days. Wanna go out tonight?"

"Sure. I hear there's a pretty good club in town, too." Alan slung an arm around her waist, waved to his band, and they headed out.

Predictably, his hand dropped to the curve of her hip when they reached the door, and Kala caught it there to forestall his typical ass-grab. He only pulled that nonsense in front of his band; once she got him alone he'd be a gentleman, but around the boys he acted like he had something to prove. Laughing, she leaned into him.

The pretty good club turned out to be more like mediocre, full of angry Goths who just wanted to unleash their frustrations in the mosh pit. Kala decided not to dance based on that. She _could_ kick higher than their heads, but with her luck one of the would be the mayor's maladjusted kid or something and she'd wind up in jail. So she settled for nabbing a booth as soon as one opened, snuggling with Alan in the corner.

Luckily the music wasn't so loud as to make conversation impossible. Alan rambled about his band and how well they were doing … and the fact that they'd auditioned a second bassist. "Hey, Alan, you know I need one of those too," Kala interjected.

Alan paused, disconcerted. "Oh, yeah, right. Well, I don't think you'd like this guy. He's kind of a rough-cut person, you know? Very … unpolished."

"Believe it or not, neither I nor my self-image are made of glass," Kala said, irritated. Just two days ago she'd had a long conversation with Alan, and he'd promised to send any talented bassists he met her way. Bass wasn't Morgan's strength, he preferred guitar, and besides he really didn't want to be living in cheap motel rooms playing third-rate tours like this. He'd rather stick to garage bands and teaching, or make the leap to actually getting signed, but this kind of grunt work wasn't for him. Morgan was only sticking around as a favor, and Kala hated to drag him into this.

Alan knew all that, he'd _promised_ her, and then he hadn't even told her until his band was auditioning someone for a _second _bass. Sighing, Alan took her hands and looked down, then forced himself to meet her eyes. "I'm sorry, babe. It was thoughtless of me not to at least send him over to you first. It's just … I don't think he has the right energy for your band, anyway. You need someone with balance and talent and tact."

More than halfway mollified—he had incredible eyes, lashes thick and dark as a girl's, and Kala melted every time she looked into them—she still said archly, "Are you saying I'm a diva? I need special handling?"

"No, Kala, you're not a diva. But Sebast is."

That got them both laughing, which got them past the awkward moment, and then Kala reported on her drummer. Ned was settling in nicely, though he hadn't quite become a friend yet. He would, eventually. Caravanning and sharing motels and eating breakfast at Huddle House at 3 AM so they could hit the road before sunrise didn't leave room for ambivalence. In those circumstances, people either became friends as close as family, or bitter enemies.

As the hour grew later, the music in the club became slower and more melodic, and Kala leaned her head against Alan's shoulder. He'd been in the midst of telling her about a sword he wanted to buy on eBay, but someone had kept outbidding him, so he used some software workaround to get in a bid at the very last second, winning the sword by three cents or some such ridiculous margin. Kala's conscience prickled at that, but she kept quiet. It was Alan's life, after all, and he'd never had ethics lessons from Jor-El. Still, she figured it was his mom's money he was spending, he could afford to raise the bid more than an insulting amount.

"Hey," Alan said, tilting her head back with two fingers under her chin. "You're real quiet tonight. Something wrong?"

"Nah," Kala demurred. "Just tired." Strange how she'd been so energized earlier, and now she wanted to curl up in bed.

"Wanna head back? I could tuck you in," Alan offered, with that little grin she loved so much. Every time Kala saw it she wanted to kiss him. And he was a very, _very_ good kisser.

"Mm, why do I think you have in mind a lot more than just tucking me in?" she teased, eyes sparkling.

"Can't blame me for trying." Alan shrugged. He never got embarrassed; she liked that too, that he was secure in himself.

That was how they ended up going back to the motel, Kala with a nice little buzz—but not much more, even after a couple of hard ciders. Alan didn't need to know how well her body processed alcohol, though, so she made herself a little unsteady on her feet. The rosy flush in her cheeks and the way that everything seemed funny, _that_ she didn't have to fake.

They were both staying in a Hampton, much better than the no-name fleapit across the road that the tour had booked, and Alan walked her to her room, his hand at the small of her back to steady her. Kala leaned against him more than was necessary. He wasn't a big, husky guy like Jason; leaning against her brother was like leaning against a warm and forgiving brick wall. But Alan was strong in a streamlined, supple way, the build of a martial artist rather than a prizefighter.

At her door, Alan turned her around and cupped her face between his hands. "Kala," he said quietly.

"Yeah?" she said, lifting an eyebrow and leaning back against the door.

"What is it with you, hmm? You have some kind of … special powers or something?"

That turned her spine to ice, instantly sobering her. _Oh, shit. How the hell did he figure out…?_

In the next second, though, he smiled and continued, "Every time I see you, it makes my day better. I can be exhausted, pissed off, whatever—seeing you makes everything _right_ again. How do you do that?"

_Oh, jeez, I'm such a paranoid dimwit,_ she laughed at herself. He had no clue he was dating a girl who could light cigarettes with her eyes and win races with sports cars and _fly_. "Alan, honey, if I told you…" She leaned in close, practically nose to nose, and lowered her voice. "…I'd have to kill you."

Alan laughed, and kissed her.

Five minutes later he was still kissing her, his hands ceaselessly framing her body from shoulders to hips. Kala had her hands under his shirt, and he had the great six-pack abs she expected. She could've gone on kissing him for the next hour or so, easily.

Except, her phone chirped. That got her attention, and she pulled away from Alan reluctantly to see who was texting her.

The message on her phone's screen was 'Hot or not?' and it was accompanied by a photo attachment of a grinning blond boy in a dark club. 'Hot enough,' Kala replied quickly, and dropped the phone back in her pocket.

Alan was less than thrilled at the interruption. "Let me guess. Sebast."

"Hey, it could've been important," Kala said defensively.

He just sighed. "You two are way too joined at the hip."

"Alan, he's my _best friend_," Kala explained, for what felt like the fiftieth time. Every single boyfriend she ever had ended up jealous of Sebast, even the ones he hit on.

"I know. I just don't like anyone coming between us." He sounded resigned.

"No, you don't like being interrupted while making out with an extremely hot chick," Kala pointed out mischievously.

"That, too," he admitted.

For a moment, just a moment, she thought about inviting him in. They hadn't slept together yet, and she didn't want the night to end quite so soon. But practicality reasserted itself; there were more important considerations than getting her groove on. It was all fine and dandy for the boys to stay out all hours of the night drinking; they'd be hung over and miserable tomorrow, and Kala wanted no part of that. "I hate to say this, but we should both be getting some sleep. On the road again tomorrow morning. At oh-dark-thirty, too."

"Yeah, we should," Alan sighed, clearly let down but seeing the sense in it. He caught her face again, and kissed her, this time sweet and simple. "Good night, Kala."

"Good night," she purred back, with a little lift of her eyebrows and an extra sway in her hips when she turned to open the door.

Alan's appreciate chuckle followed her to bed.

…

Jason got a very different text the same night. _Tim's hurt bad. Meet me at GGH._ That was from Cassie, coming in on an ordinary Tuesday evening, and making it anything but ordinary.

By the time Jason got the news, Tim was already out of surgery and recovering in a private room in Gotham General Hospital. According to the second message he'd received, Tim was in stable condition and would probably go home after a night of observation. Alfred and Dr. Thompkins plus the Bat-Cave's resources were more than enough to ensure his complete recovery.

Jason dropped in anyway, wanting to see for himself. He found the window ledge outside Tim's room rather crowded. Steph was there, of course, worrying her lower lip and staring inward. Dick was perched on the other end of the sill, also looking in. Cassie had settled for hovering, which Jason couldn't do, so he managed to balance on the narrow upper ledge.

Cassie was the one who looked up at his arrival. "He'll be okay," she said. "He woke up, and he's talking to Bruce now."

Of course Bruce would be inside with his youngest. "What happened?"

Dick shifted uncomfortably, but Steph was the one who answered. "That sonofabitch Red Hood got hold of him. Vandalized the Cave, then hunted Tim down while wearing a version of his old Robin uniform, and tried to kill him."

"Wait, _what_?" Jason yelped. "Did you say…?"

"Yeah," Dick said, his voice freighted with grief. "Red Hood is Robin Number Two. And as soon as he knew Bruce knew, he decided to go after his successor."

"He's not right in the head," Cassie explained.

"Yeah, and after he went ten rounds with Tim, he's probably not right in the body either," Steph growled.

Jason had to concentrate on hanging on to his perch. The other Jason, Bruce's second son, the second Robin, the one who'd died. The one whose uniform had sent chills down Jason's spine when he saw it hanging ghostlike in the memorial case. _He_ was the new crook in town, this Red Hood who killed wantonly and defied the Bats' attempts to catch him.

That was when Batman stepped out onto the ledge. He looked at the assembled Titans, and said only, "He _will_ recover. And this will _not_ happen again."

"Damn right it won't," Steph snapped.

The cowl turned to her, but the words were for all of them. "Do _not_ go after Red Hood. Leave him to me." With that he stepped off the ledge, spread his cloak, and soared off into the night.

Steph stepped into the room, going to the bedside, and the rest followed her. By now the staff of Gotham General had certain standard procedures whenever one of the caped crowd came in. Masks stayed on, identities were preserved, and visitors who didn't check in downstairs were expected. So the nurse who walked in to check Tim's vitals didn't even bat an eyelash at four costumed heroes in the room. She only said with a hint of scolding in her voice, "He needs his rest."

"Don't worry. We won't bother him. It's just … we had to see for ourselves," Steph told her, taking Tim's hand. The nurse checked his chart and left. Only then did Tim's eyes open, and Steph whispered softly, "You look like _shit_, Robin.

Tim smiled gamely at her. "Should see the other guy," he managed to mumble.

Dick took his other hand. "You've got to get better, little brother. You lost the last card game, and you've got to wash my car this weekend."

That got a weak laugh, and Jason eased up alongside Steph. "I see. You set this up just so you wouldn't have to do any more paperwork, huh?"

"Busted," Tim managed to say. He was half falling asleep again in front of them, and Cassie had just enough time to say they'd keep watch over him before his eyes slipped closed and his breathing evened out.

"What's he even doing in Gotham General?" Cassie asked quietly.

"Civilian found him," Dick said. "I was en route; Oracle caught part of the fight and sent me to assist, but it was over by the time I got there. No trace of Hood, either, so I came here."

They talked about treatment and recovery time and who would take over which duties while Jason listened with half an ear and nodded at the right times. He was watching Tim carefully, listening to his heartbeat and breathing, as if by doing so he could somehow help him heal. Once again he was struck by the fact that all of his powers were utterly _useless_ here. He could deflect bullets, outrun a cheetah, jump a sixty-story building, and pick up a freaking _train_, but none of it could help Tim.

The two had met when Jason went to Gotham when he was sixteen, and after a false start caused by Jason's factual assertion that he couldn't be hurt—and Tim taking it as a challenge to his martial arts prowess—they'd become fast friends. These days Jason considered Tim his best friend. One of two best friends, actually, because he still kept in touch with Dustin Carmichael in Smallville. It was sort of like having a best friend for each half of who he was. Although Tim knew him as more than Superboy, they didn't get to hang out in plainclothes all that often. And Dustin didn't know his best pal was half-alien.

Tim was—well, he was a lot of things. A hell of a lot better trained than Jason himself, but then, he had to be. Gotham chewed up capes and spit them out in pieces, so if you couldn't bounce bullets off your chest, you had to get really good at dodging them. Like Jason, Tim could be very serious and dedicated, but he took it a step further and Jason saw it as his duty to lighten him up occasionally. Another thing they had in common was geekitude. While Tim didn't share his taste in monster movies, they did like most of the same sci-fi books and films.

Sometimes Jason forgot that things like this could happen to people he knew and cared about. He should've known better; his own mother had never quite regained all the strength in her right arm. But it was very human to forgot, to pretend that bad things never happened to good people, to think his love could shield his friends from the cold truths of the world. Perhaps that was how the mind protected itself. If he had to remember every day that someone could shoot Tim, or Kala, or Mom, he'd go crazy.

"Hello, Earth to Superboy? Come in, Krypto-Clone?" Jason startled when Cassie waved her hand in front of his face. He'd been so lost in his thoughts he hadn't followed the conversation at all. "Come on, we've got to go. Robin will be safe here tonight."

"You're sure?" he couldn't help asking.

Dick smiled. "Oracle and I will be keeping a _very_ close eye on him."

"And besides, Batman didn't actually give us permission to be here," Cassie added, glancing toward Dick.

He shrugged. "You're welcome in Blüdhaven, but in Gotham, it's Batman's rules. So let's go ahead and … where's Spoiler?"

Jason and Cassie both turned around to where they _thought_ Steph was standing, but she was gone. Realization struck them all at the same time: she'd gone after Tim's attacker. "Oh, _shit_," Jason whispered.

Cassie turned and grabbed Dick's arm, leaning in close. "Quick, 'Wing. Where would she look for Hood?"

"Probably somewhere in the Bowery, that's his turf, but…. Oh, hell. You two go get her, I'll distract the Bat."

A moment later there were only shadows in the room, and Tim slept, not knowing that his girlfriend was out there spoiling for a fight with the same guy who'd put him in the hospital.

…

That night wasn't a good one for Gotham's criminals. With two hurried, harried super-powered teens rifling through the worst side of town, they seemed to find new crooks and creeps around every corner. When Jason saw a guy raising a metal pipe over someone on the ground, he reacted without even seeing if it was Steph, snatching the pipe and throwing the man across the alley.

"Run," Cassie said to the confused man on the ground, who was grabbing for a set of brass knuckles. Only then did Jason realize he'd broken up a fight, not saved a friend. Watching them both scatter, Cassie shook her head. "This isn't subtle, Superboy. We've got to be more careful or the Bat's gonna come down on us."

"We've got to find Spoiler. Doesn't Oracle have a lead on her?"

They leaped to a rooftop before Cassie replied, "Spoiler was trained by Oracle, too. She knows where most of the cameras are."

Jason's heart was racing—worry that Bruce would put an abrupt stop to their rescue mission, fear for Steph, anger at this asshole who'd shot Tim. In light of that, what happened next shouldn't have been a surprise.

"What's got you so worked up, Superboy?" The velvety voice out of the darkness startled Cassie, but not Jason.

One of these days he was going to have to get better at regulating his reactions. _Oh, yeah, it's so much fun being a super. My twin can hear my heart __**wherever**__ she is. I should have expected her to turn up in a situation like this._ Unable to resist a sheepish grin despite the severity of the situation at hand, Jason quickly updated her. "Blur. Robin's been hurt. Spoiler went after his attacker. We need to find her and stop her. Batman thinks this one is a threat to _any_ of us."

"Especially when she's too angry for caution," Cassie interjected.

"Shit! Why doesn't anyone pick up a phone and _call_ me? Is T—Robin gonna be okay?" The lapse was tiny, but Jason turned sharp eyes on Kala anyway. They shared irritated frowns then. No real names in the field, that was a cardinal rule, and she knew it. But he supposed he could let it slide, considering the circumstances. And, bad situation or not, he hadn't seen his twin sister in weeks. A tiny slip amongst friends could be forgivable tonight. Freaked as he was trying not to be, having Kala where he could see her gave him a little more focus.

It was weird to see her out here in _plainclothes_, a black top and jeans under a long black coat that fluttered in the breeze, but at least she had a mask on. Kala kept one handy for emergencies, even though she didn't have an official uniform—or membership on the team, for that matter. Then again, the Blur was just the nickname the press had given her. They knew _something_ faster than any camera's shutter speed sometimes turned up when Superboy and his friends were in danger, but no one knew anything about her. Even the caped crowd was mostly in the dark.

Cassie knew who she was, but the two girls didn't really know each other. Kala only knew Tim because he was Jason's friend. She didn't know Steph, either, but she was game to try, and that was a good thing. Anything that got them out of Gotham without a Bat-lecture was a good thing.

"All right, do you have any kind of lead on her?" Kala asked.

"She's probably somewhere in the Bowery," was all Jason could give her.

Kala scowled. "Okay, fine. I'll go high and see if I can eagle-eye her somewhere. There shouldn't be much else out tonight that's that particular shade of aubergine." Without waiting for confirmation, she was off.

Cassie looked at Jason with a raised eyebrow, and he shrugged. Kala should've waited for confirmation, but she wasn't used to working in a team. He and Cassie kept up their sweep, Jason listening for his sister's pulse. His hearing wasn't quite as good as hers yet, he didn't hear her unless he thought about it, but he could always find her. And right now she was quartering above the city.

Just as he and Cassie crossed another street, he heard Kala change direction, heading back toward them. He put on a burst of speed, racing to meet her, and bounded from one roof to the other.

Kala swept down to them, saying, "Five blocks north and two west, she just went into some kind of abandoned factory." Having conveyed the message, she was off again, heading back to Steph.

"Does she even know Batman has the city on lockdown?" Cassie asked, flying slowly enough that Jason could keep pace.

"Probably not," Jason admitted, and then they were there.

A moment too late, it seemed, as a batarang came winging out of the darkness to slam into a support column. "Hey, watch it! I'm on your side!" Kala called, and Jason groaned.

"It's us, Spoiler," Cassie called.

Steph turned to face them all, her blue eyes ablaze with fury. "If you're here to drag me home and put me to bed like a good kid, you've got another think comin'," she spat. "I'm _not_ gonna sit on my thumbs while Robin's in the hospital and Batman's off brooding somewhere!"

"No one said you should," Kala cut in, before Jason or Cassie could speak.

Glaring at Kala, Cassie stepped up. "Listen, Spoiler, this isn't the time. This guy is on full alert right now. He _has_ to know we're after him. So going up against him right now, when we're all pissed off and he's as ready as he'll ever be, that's not the best choice. We need to give him time to get secure again, and then we can hit him like a ton of bricks. Okay?"

"I hate to say it, but Batman knows him better than any of us. We should at least wait and see what _he's_ doing before we plan our own strategy," Jason offered. Later on they could talk Steph down from her one-woman crusade. Right now they just had to get her to defer it long enough for rage to settle down and let her thought processes—the ones unrelated to relentlessly kicking Red Hood's ass, anyway—come back online.

She wavered, just for a second, and then her voice was much softer when she asked, "What if we _don't_ have time? What then?"

Cassie took Steph's armored shoulders and held her still, looking past the cowl into pain-filled eyes. "Honey, it's _Robin_. He'll be fine. He didn't even get shot anywhere vital. He just lost some blood, took some bruises, and got a concussion. Except for the blood, he's done worse training."

Kala looked at Jason as if she was about to say something, and then her expression changed, her eyes going unfocused. "_Shit!_ S—my BFF just got back to the hotel. I gotta fly or he'll wonder where I am."

The twins exchanged a look and Jason nodded. It was a lot more dangerous for Kala to be caught out than usual, her life so bound up in the civilian world than his own. Those closest to Kala still hadn't the slightest idea where she occasionally ran off to; not even Sebast was aware of just how out-of-this-world his best girl really was. And remembering that made Jason all the more grateful for her intervention tonight. And it was obvious that she knew, Kala giving him a tiny grin and nodding. _She knows. She always knows._ "I'll update you later, Blur," Jason said as she rose into the air again, and then turned all his attention to Steph, where it belonged.

None of them knew the chase and confrontation had been captured by several of Oracle's cameras. In the circumstances, though, she decided not to share that video with Bruce.


	5. Old Habits and Occasional Missteps

Another one of those completely insane weeks where we got this done JUST before deadline. Here's hoping everyone enjoys.

Also, just a head's-up that we'll be going out of town **April 22-29** and there will be no posting that weekend. The schedule will stay the same until then, _**ATU**_ next week and one more _**Love and Other Headaches**_ the day before we leave, but the posting schedule will pick back up on May 5. With the crazy insanity lately, we just need time to recharge and do some SERIOUS plotty goodness. Thanks for understanding in advance!

* * *

><p>Sebast found his way home at four in the morning, exhausted but pleased with his lot in life. The little meet-and-greet with the bands had ended up with not one, but <em>two<em> very handsome young men who were quite interested in getting to know him better. Sven, tall and blonde and chiseled, and Daniel, who was mouse-brown and more rounded, were both obvious fans of more than just the music. Sebast had gone out to a club with them, he'd had a couple drinks and some dancing with the couple, and then back to their apartment for a few hours of energetic fun.

Now, though, all he wanted was sleep, and he wouldn't have gotten it if he stayed the night with Sven and Daniel. Sebast grinned a little, anticipating giving Kala all the salacious details over coffee in the morning. She was much more conservative about her love life than he was, but that was her prerogative and they respected each other's choices.

The room was pitch-dark when he let himself in, and Sebast considerately kept the noise level down, tiptoeing into the shower. He washed up quickly, dried himself off, and threw on a pair of boxers to sleep in. Considering the warm night, a shirt wasn't necessary. Still trying for ninja-like stealth to keep from waking Kala, who tended to startle easily at late-night noise, Sebast slid between the sheets and snuggled up to her, his arm sliding around her waist.

Something was wrong.

That wasn't Kala he was curled up to—the shoulders were too broad, bare skin met his naked chest, and Kala for sure didn't have any damn _back hair_. Sebast gasped in surprise, and only then caught the whiff of sex that _wasn't_ coming from his own pores.

The man in his bed woke up then, kicking out in surprise and banging painfully against Sebast's shin. "_¡Mierda!_" he yelped, launching himself out of bed.

"What the hell…?" Alan's voice was sleep-rough, and he thrashed around to grope for the light switch, illuminating the room. Kala was just then sitting up, all eyes and tousled hair, yanking the sheets up to cover herself.

Sebast had seen it all before and didn't particularly care—about that. He'd figured Kala would eventually sleep with Alan; their relationship had been heading in that direction for a while. What shocked him was the fact that they'd decided to cross that threshold _here_, where he had to sleep, too. "_Chula_, what is this hairy bastard doing in my bed?" he asked, forcing his voice to tones of sweet reason.

"Kala," Alan said, and maybe he was getting ready to say something else, but to Sebast it sounded like an answer to his question, and speaking crassly of Kala was like waving a red flag before an already-irritated Spanish fighting bull.

"Yeah, I noticed that, _hijo de puta_. I can smell the sex-funk. Now shut up, the grownups are talking." With that he turned his attention to Kala, crossing his arms and glaring at her. To her, he spoke Spanish; for all its wonderful variety, English just didn't convey his aggravation. "Seriously, why the hell is he here?"

She replied in the same language, with an easy fluency that clearly startled Alan. "It was late and we were tired. I didn't know if you were ever going to show up, Chupi. I thought the Goth Viking and his boyfriend carried you off for good."

Sebast sighed. "Come on, Kala. You know our rule: never in our bed."

"Alan's sharing a room with his drummer. Where else were we supposed to go? The pool? That'd be great when it shows up in the newspaper. I'm sure Mom would love explaining that one around the office."

"Well if you've gotta get your freak on in our room, at least use the couch. I don't wanna sleep in his fuck-sweat," Sebast complained.

"_Sebastiáno!_" she yelped, blushing furiously.

Kala never used his full name, so he took it as his cue to calm down a little. "Look, I almost had a heart attack just now, Kala. I thought I was snuggling up to my favorite internally-heated pillow slash best friend in the whole wide world, and it was _him_ instead. So forgive me if I'm a little worked up about it, okay?"

She softened, and they shared a smile. That was the moment when Alan decided to interject, "It's extremely rude to speak to each other in a language I don't know."

"So learn Spanish. There's fifty million Latinos in the U.S., and you'll wanna understand the names we're calling you," Sebast shot back in English.

"Guys, stop," Kala said sternly. "Alan, I'm sorry, but I shouldn't have let you stay over. Sebast needs someplace to sleep too."

"Are you _seriously_ kicking me out of bed for him?" Alan asked, with a hint of anger.

Sebast couldn't resist responding hotly. "Listen, _cabrón_, I've been her best friend since we were fourteen. I was here long before you, and I'll still be here when she realizes you don't deserve to polish her goddamn boots. Kala is _mi alma_, my soul—nothing comes before that. _Nothing_. Not her men, not mine. You understand?"

As Alan eyed him, Sebast stood his ground, not giving an inch. Then Alan sighed. "Whatever. I've got an early slot tomorrow. I'll see when I come offstage, Kala." With that he got out of bed, found his pants, and let himself out of the room.

Kala cradled her forehead in one palm. "Well, that was a disastrous end to quite a good night," she muttered.

That, finally, cooled his temper. Sebast knew he was not a terribly forgiving person by nature; hot-headed and confrontational, he could also hold a champion grudge when irritated enough. But Kala was more important than making his displeasure felt, and besides he'd apparently done that well enough.

"_Mira, mi_ Kala, _te quiero,_ but we have rules for a reason. Our bed is where we both sleep. Neither of us wants to come home to sweaty man funk." He kissed the top of her head, and she lifted her chin to nudge into the kiss. "Now get cleaned up. I'm calling the front desk to get some clean sheets brought up here. Maybe if you promise not to bring anime-wannabe boy back here, I'll even put them on the bed for you."

"What a gentleman," Kala said sarcastically, swatting at his arm before she took herself off to the bathroom for a shower.

…

The best part about having kids grow up, Lois decided, was that when they came home to visit they really _appreciated_ home in a way they never had when their belongings were scattered all over. Jason had come in Friday evening after class, and when she opened the door for him he'd hugged her hard enough to lift her off her feet. She might never get used to having her toes dangle a few inches off the floor when her son hugged her, but it was charming nonetheless.

Friday night was dining-out night, and Jason insisted on picking up the tab when they met Richard, Lana, and Kristin at a laid-back but thoroughly delicious pizza place. It had been a fun night, full of conversation about college courses and work and friendships and other good news. What they couldn't talk about in front of Kristin—and really shouldn't talk about in front of Richard and Lana, despite their insider status—was the Gotham situation. That had to wait until they were all home again.

Last she heard, Bruce's Tim was well on the road to recovery, which Lois was glad to hear. Bruce still had Gotham on lockdown, and while Kal-El tended not to bring office politics home, Jason had no problem grousing about it. "Cassie and I are sensible, we've worked Gotham before, there's no good reason _not_ to bring us in," he'd complained. "Especially with Steph still champing at the bit to go after this guy. I'm worried about her, I'm worried about Tim, hell, I'm even worried about _Uncle Bruce_."

Kal-El had paused thoughtfully before saying, "If this had happened to me, Jason, I might've reacted the same way. When Kala was kidnapped, I did _exactly_ the same thing Bruce is doing now. It's a panicked-father reaction. If someone took you from me, if I thought I'd lost you, and you came back to Metropolis so damaged in mind and personality that you attacked your sister—either of your sisters—I would probably want to lock down this city, too. I'd want to take care of you myself, because you're my son, and if you were that far out of control I wouldn't trust anyone else to deal with you. I'd be too afraid that you'd hurt them, or they'd hurt you, and besides I would feel it was my duty as a father to find you and stop you before you could hurt anyone else."

Lois had looked at him quietly, the hairs on the nape of her neck standing up in foreboding. God forbid anything like that should touch this family, but it wasn't beyond the realm of possibility. Mind control, red k, magic—all of those could affect Kryptonians. They didn't know what the future could hold, and the situation Kal-El imagined could have come true. She had no idea what she'd do if something like that happened to Jason, and hoped she'd never have to find out.

Jason, meanwhile, hadn't taken the explanation well, his head still lowered and a mulish expression on his face, one Lois knew well from his childhood. His stubborn moments had been few and far between, but quite memorable. Kal-El merely met his son's gaze, and after a moment he had continued, "In that situation, I would hope a friend would talk sense to me. And that's what I intend to do with Bruce, as soon as I can. Keeping Gotham locked down and everyone in the city on high alert is only escalating problems, and he'll see that."

"Good," Jason had said decisively, and they'd moved on to other topics.

Now, Saturday afternoon, he was being obtrusively helpful as he often was on his weekends at home. He'd already walked the dogs with her, taking Bagel so she could walk Chewie. And now he was rummaging through the fridge and pantry, planning to make dinner. Kal-El was out on evening rounds and might not be home to help out, but Jason was a fine cook on his own. Lois smirked to herself; another thing she liked about having him at college was the way all of his strengths and best characteristics kept coming to mind while he was home. The minor personality faults that were part of everyone tended to fade when they didn't see each other on a daily basis, leaving just the things that made her so proud of him.

"If I can intrude, Mr. Kitchen Wizard?" Lois said, laughing a little, and Jason turned his quick grin on her, blue eyes flashing with mirth. "I'll set up soufflé for dessert if you handle dinner."

"Sounds like a plan to me. No one makes a soufflé as good as yours, Mom, " Jason replied, making space for her as he grinned. Lois just ruffled his hair, returning the smile. Mother and son moved around each other easily in the kitchen. Ever since he was little, he'd wanted to help, and Lois remembered with a pang of nostalgia the days when he'd had to stand on a chair to help mix cookie batter. Now, he easily handed her some ramekins from the top shelf without even fully extending his arm.

"I've missed you, kiddo."

"I've missed you, too, Mom."

In the comfortable warmth of shared endeavor, Lois decided to broach a subject she'd been paying attention to, but not commenting on, for the last day. Truth be told, she'd noticed it well before that, but last night at dinner it had become obvious. To her, anyway. The disquieting note was as simple as it was odd: when Kristin asked what Elise was up to, Jason had an immediate and extensive reply.

That worried Lois, just a little, so she followed up on it as she brushed the ramekins with melted butter and coated them with sugar. "So have you heard from Elise lately?" she asked while Jason diced rutabaga and celery root. He already had lentils simmering in chicken stock on the back burner.

"Not really," he admitted. With super-speed, the dicing process could be reduced to seconds, but Jason often liked to take things slow and enjoy them more.

"Oh?"

"She's really busy with college this semester," he continued. "She's taking two labs and a lot of credit hours. And she's going to take some summer courses, too, trying to get some electives out of the way."

"So she's settled in at Berkeley fairly well? I know she was a little nervous when she first left," Lois asked, leading him on while keeping her back to him. Jason hadn't yet realized she was using interviewing techniques on him.

"Yeah, fairly well. I mean, she's not in as many campus activities and stuff because she's always studying."

"What about friends? She's a hell of a long way from home."

_That_ was the kicker. Jason huffed slightly, and when he answered his voice held an unmistakable note of distaste. "She's made a couple friends in class and stuff. And she has a boyfriend, some guy named Corrin."

She gave a silent sigh. Yep, there it was in a nutshell. It wasn't entirely unexpected, but it made her sad for him all the same. "Really? Well, you two _did_ decide to take a break."

"Yeah, I just didn't expect to see her posting all over her Facebook about this guy and how he takes her out to dinner and they go to the movies and stuff," Jason replied. He kept his voice level, but Lois noticed that the poor rutabaga was getting savagely diced.

Lois asked casually, still working. "You check her Facebook a lot, don't you?"

"I get alerts to my phone when she updates," he replied.

At that, she decided it was time to point a few things out to her son. Lois put the prepped ramekins in the freezer and turned to him. That got Jason's attention, and he stopped his assault on defenseless root vegetables long enough to turn a quizzical look at his mother. "Sweetheart, don't you think that that's kind of creepy?" Lois said, as gently as she could.

"Mom, she's my friend," Jason protested.

That left eyebrow arched, his mother smiling a little as she crossed her arms. There really were days that her son really thought he could fool her for about sixty seconds. Obviously this was one of them. "Yeah, but do you have any other friends set to alert? Dustin, maybe? How about your sisters or your cousins?"

His lower lip pouted out a little. "They're different. They'll actually call me. And Dustin never updates his Facebook status anyway."

"Annnd if Elise doesn't call you, or email you, or IM you, do you think she'd be happy to know you were getting alerts every time she updates her status?" Lois asked, crossing her arms. She caught a hint of a glower in his eyes and pressed on, "And if it wasn't Elise, what if it was some girl you know from class—do you think any of them would be happy to know any guy, no matter how nice he is, was getting alerts on their status while they were dating someone else?"

She knew her son. He wanted to protest; the frown creasing his brow was identical to her own, tenacious as any Lane could be. But he had some of Kal-El's cooler temper, too, and he didn't speak up rashly. Instead he hung his head and muttered, "No. No, she wouldn't."

Now that he'd seen his mistake, Lois' job was to help him understand it, and prevent the Kryptonian guilt complex from taking root. Lois took his chin gently and tilted his face up. "Sweetheart, I know you still love her. That doesn't change the fact that you _have_ to let her go."

"But Mom, she's the _one_," Jason complained.

Lois chuckled. "You know, when your father was about your age, he thought he'd found The One, too. Since you don't have red hair, we know he was wrong." That got a smile from Jason, and Lois decided to continue that line of reasoning a little more. "Lana's still in his life, and she always will be. I'm even grateful to have her around—but _don't_ let the cheerleader know I said that, she'll never let me hear the end of it. Jason, sometimes young love grows up into something wonderful, even if it isn't romantic. And Elise will always be part of our lives. She knows the truth."

"I know. It's just…" Jason trailed off, looking miserable.

"Elise is everything you want, and all you want is Elise," Lois finished for him.

"Exactly," he agreed.

Lois sighed. Sometimes it was hard to remember the days when she was so young and certain. In the years since first falling in love with Kal-El, she'd learned that doubt was an occasional part of love, and that reaffirming commitment after doubt only made it stronger. It seemed that love, like faith, was strongest when tested. "The thing is, Jason, Elise is nineteen years old. She's young and beautiful and she wants to feel like her options are wide-open. That doesn't mean she'll never come back to you, and it doesn't mean she definitely will. She just wants to feel like she has a _choice_ in the matter."

Jason frowned again. "She does have a choice. Mom, she loves me. She's happier with me than she is with anyone else. I know she misses me as much as I miss her. Why can't she just be happy with her life?"

Chuckling, Lois turned down the heat just a bit on the bubbling lentils before they overcooked. Jason took that moment to quickly slide the celery root and rutabaga into the oven for a brief roast. Kitchen crisis averted, Lois looked at her son seriously. "Oh, sweetheart. Look, believe it or not, I _do_ remember being young. Surprise, I _was_ your age once. Jason, Elise has to figure herself out before she can be committed to you, Jason. You have to let her go, _really_ let her go, as in stop Facebook-stalking her and everything else, so she can do that. If she's really the one, she'll come back. And if she's not, then she wasn't the one to begin with."

He started dicing an onion, his mouth set in an unhappy line. "I know how to let go of her Facebook and her phone number, but I don't know how to get her out of my heart. Mom, I don't even think that's possible."

"Well, there might be one way, you know. You could maybe actually take a shot at dating other girls," Lois offered.

Oh, the black look _that_ got her! "Sure. I saw how that worked out with you and Daddy Richard. 'If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with' is actually pretty shoddy advice, Mom."

She laughed out loud. "Excuse me? I got free weeknight babysitting and kid-chauffeuring for three years, another twelve years of kid-sharing by appointment, _and_ a very good friend for the rest of our lives. Plus man-bait to keep the redhead away from your father. It didn't work out with me and Richard, but I don't regret it at all."

"You don't?" Jason asked, puzzled.

Lois shook her head, smirking. "Not a bit. I never have. Jason, you were just a kid when all of that was going on and you missed a few of the finer details. No, he wasn't the one, but that doesn't mean that we weren't good together, and we're still good together. And we did love each other then and we do now. Just as friends, which we were always better at. You _really_ can't say this to him, because no one should feed that ego, but Richard is a pretty incredible guy and I'm damn lucky to still have him in life."

Jason went very quiet, mulling over that thought as he slid the onion aside to be sautéed with some mushrooms later. The next task that needed doing was sautéing some chicken breasts, and he minced fresh thyme and rosemary to season them with.

Letting the silence spin out, Lois got to work alongside her son, melting chocolate and butter until she had a dark, smooth, creamy bowl of deliciousness. A dash of vanilla, and she set it aside to beat some egg yolks into a froth. Of course Jason waited until the stand mixer was running to say, "I'm not even sure I still know how to meet girls."

"Then you _definitely_ need to get your mind off Elise and try dating someone else," Lois replied over the machine's whirring, adding some sugar and watching for the mixture to form ribbons. _This_ kind of cooking was her style, relying on observation and intuition instead of reading a recipe card. Once the egg yolks were at the right stage, she cut the mixer off so she could fold them into the chocolate.

Meanwhile, Jason hadn't replied. "I know you forget sometimes, but you're only _nineteen_, Jason. This is going to sound like the stereotypical 'Mom' speech, but it's actually true. You _do_ have your whole life ahead of you. Don't get me wrong, I'd love for you settle down with Elise and get married and have a wonderful life. You deserve to be incredibly happy. But I also don't want you to look back twenty years from now and wish you'd at least considered your options."

"Yeah," he sighed, still not convinced.

"Yeah," she said back in the same tone, mocking him until he looked at her. "We both know you don't want to hear that, but it's honest advice from someone who's got a little experience in that department. Your father and I took things for granted the first time around. I think we both assumed that, because we were so much in love, the world would revolve around _us_. And it doesn't work that way. You know the story. We had to fight for this marriage more than once. I think Elise is a little worried that things seem too easy with you, and she wants to be sure she's not just following the path of least resistance."

"She _is_ the resistance," Jason muttered grumpily, and Lois just chuckled.

Whether or not he took her advice was up to him, but at least she'd convinced him to stop the cyber-stalking. If Elise had found out about that, Lois could just imagine her outrage.

…

Even if he closed his eyes and blocked his ears, he'd know where he was by the taste and texture of the air. Gotham City was soot and exhaust, fog and rain, old brick quietly crumbling into dust and the faint vibration of electricity. Kal-El hung above it, wondering for the thousandth time how different life would have been if he'd landed here instead of Kansas, or even if he'd moved here instead of Metropolis.

And just as often, he'd wondered how would Bruce's life have been different if he'd been raised somewhere else. Somewhere like Smallville, though it was far too tiny for the Waynes' wealth and circumstance, but still, he imagined it. Bruce Wayne brought up in a place where the worst crime of the decade was a car theft by joy-riding teens. How much of who they were was a product of their essential selves, and how much was circumstance and early environment?

They would never know how much of each personality was nature and how much was nurture. What Kal-El did know for certain was that they had several things in common: a finely-honed sense of justice, a dogged tenacity to seeing things through, and an overwhelming conviction to fight cruelty and evil and injustice wherever they found it. Not to mention a shared admiration for courageous, tempestuous women. Those commonalities, along with the mission they both pursued, made them friends.

Hovering above the city, Kal-El scanned for a telltale flicker of darkness within darkness, for a shadow that moved against the wind. He ultimately found Batman crouched on a roofline, his bat-eared cowl's silhouette invisible from every angle except this one. Carefully, Kal-El maneuvered himself to a position above and behind Bruce, listening in to make sure he wasn't dropping in at a bad moment.

Bruce was listening in to the police band and surveying the street below, but didn't seem to be onto anything urgent, so Kal-El dropped down to hover over the same roof. Before he could speak, Bruce turned his head to look over his shoulder. Kal-El hadn't made a sound, and there was no vibration from footsteps when he hadn't touched down yet, but he'd never surprised Bruce with his arrivals. He knew better than to ask how Bruce always knew when he was hovering nearby; the answer would surely be 'Because I'm the Batman'.

The eyes behind the cowl's lenses were keen, and asked a question Bruce didn't feel the need to voice: _You know Gotham is on lockdown. Why are you here?_

Kal-El crossed his arms, maintaining his hover a couple inches above the roof, his bright uniform mostly concealed by shadows. He let his expression and the tilt of his brows give his answer: _I am a citizen of this entire world, and no place is closed to me. Also I want to talk to you._ He added, quietly and with a touch of humor, "Getting you out of your city is a lot like removing a badger from its sette. It's not exactly easy."

Bruce nodded, once, and rose fluidly, as if he hadn't been sitting in a crouch for the last hour or two, possibly more. He walked to the edge of the roof and stepped off, spreading his cloak to glide. Kal-El followed, as Bruce had intended. By grapnel and glide and super-powered flight they reached the top of an old church, where Bruce stepped inside the highest tower, where the bells had once hung.

Kal-El did _not_ make the remark about bats in a belfry that occurred to him. Bruce awaited him in the shadows, and his voice retained its on-duty harshness. "So talk."

Leading gently to a topic never worked with Bruce. He admired subtlety, true, but direct appeals worked better if the asker had the fortitude and knowledge to run the gauntlet of Bruce's rejections. So Kal-El said simply, "I—and some of the others—would like you to lift the lockdown on Gotham."

"Not until this business with Red Hood is finished, one way or the other," came the expected reply.

"At least let us help you. Some of us aren't completely useless at finding people who don't want to be found. And we might be able to bring a few extra resources to figuring out how this happened."

The cowl shook once, left to right, decisive. "No. My protégé, my problem."

"If it was my son, I'd be asking for your help."

"If it was your son, you'd _need_ my help. I'm the only one in the League with kryptonite."

"That's not the point. You're my colleague, you're my _friend_, and you're a very good person to have around in a sticky situation. Three years ago I learned what happens when I refuse the League's help: you all get drawn into it eventually anyway. Besides, the kids are worried."

"Don't act as if I'm unaware that Superboy and Blur have _both_ been in Gotham, along with Wonder Girl."

"Yes, they were—persuading Spoiler to follow your orders, if I recall correctly. None of them engaged Red Hood."

Bruce's eyes narrowed imperceptibly. "I would have stopped her myself, if I hadn't been deliberately interfered with."

"You don't have to do everything yourself. That's why we have the League, so we can help each other."

Slicing one hand through the air in a cutting-off gesture, Bruce turned away as if to go. Kal-El heard the report come in over Bruce's comm just before the man himself said it out loud. "You don't know what you're dealing with. He just set fire to a meth lab, with the dealers inside."

"I know better than you realize," Kal-El replied, and knew Bruce could hear him even as he stepped to the edge of the parapet. "He's your son. He's just like you, with no brakes, no restraint. He does everything you do, but he doesn't stop with putting them in the hospital."

"No. He puts them in the morgue, in very small boxes most of the time. I can't allow that." With those words he stepped off the edge, hurrying to the burning meth lab.

Kal-El could hear it, once he tuned his hearing to roar of flames. It was already too late for lifesaving measures; there were no heartbeats inside the ramshackle tenement that was being greedily devoured by fire. He could go put it out with freeze-breath, but sirens told him the GCFD was already on its way. Helping Bruce now would only antagonize him further.

Sighing, because while he'd known one conversation wasn't going to change Bruce's mind he had still hoped to end on a better note than this, Kal-El took out his cell phone and sent a message to D. Prince. It said simply: _Tried, no luck. Your turn._

The answer was swift. _O first. Then me. He'll see sense eventually._

Thumbs blurring with super-speed, Kal-El replied: _He never stopped mourning. Now he's caught between grief and rage._

_Story of his life,_ was her response. Kal-El had to agree, little as he liked it or what it meant for Bruce and his sons.

With that weight on his shoulders, he turned for home.

….

Dinner was just about ready, the lentils and roasted vegetables perfuming the house with a savory scent that made Jason's mouth water. While Lois finished her chocolate soufflé and set it in the refrigerator to chill, Jason set the table, making three places since Dad was expected home any moment.

The French doors opened, and Jason called out loudly, "Hi, Dad!"

"I'm not Dad, you incredible geek," came the laughing reply, and Jason dropped the forks and rushed to the living room.

"_Kala_?" He hadn't expected her; other than their brief collaboration to stop Steph from hunting down Red Hood, he hadn't seen his twin in almost a month. Seeing her standing there with a big smirk on her face, Jason couldn't express his happiness any other way than to grab her around the waist, pick her up, and swing her around.

She shrieked with joy, thumping his shoulders and kissing his cheek. "Lizardboy! Knock it off or people will think you missed me or something!"

"I did miss you, Elvira," Jason muttered, setting her down but squeezing her in a tight hug.

Kala gasped melodramatically. "You're squishing me!"

"I like squishing you," he replied, and squeezed tighter.

"Mom … help … hug … of death…" Kala wheezed. Sure enough, Lois had come to the doorway into the living room and was shaking her head in amusement at them.

"Why am I not surprised that the half-alien garbage disposal shows up when we're about to eat?" Lois teased, but once Jason let her go she hugged her daughter just as long. Kala just snuggled in happily.

"Hey, I got the freeloader gene from you, Mother dear," Kala replied, and smooched her mother's cheek, leaving a smudge of purple lipstick. Seeing it, Jason automatically rubbed his own cheek and saw his fingers come away purple.

"Are you sure you can stay for dinner?" he asked hopefully, rubbing the smear away on the tail of his shirt. It would come out in the wash later.

She waved a hand airily. "Yeah, the boys are off doing testosterone-related bonding stuff. Which probably involved beer and competitive belching. That's fine, it helps them work together as a band, but I'm not invited because having a _girl_ around would mess up the boys'-night vibe. Whatever, I have you to come home to."

"What about the boyfriend?" Lois asked perceptively.

Kala rolled her eyes. "Currently making my life a drama llama farm. Alan is being a _complete_ pissy bitch right now. I'll fill you in on the details later, but after what happened last night and our conversation this afternoon, I offered him some of my Midol and told him to call me when he got his panties un-bunched."

"Ouch," Jason said, nevertheless impressed. Kala never stood for nonsense with her boyfriends, which was why most of them were out of her life before he had a chance to learn their names these days. Dustin was the only one she'd ever been willing to make concessions for, and he had never asked for much since he loved her just as she was. It still saddened Jason that the two had split up.

About then, a familiar red and blue blur arrived on the balcony, and a moment later Clark was inside. "Kala! I didn't expect you, sweetheart."

"Daddy!" She jumped into his arms for a hug, and he swung her around too—gently, though. Jason had almost whacked her heels against the sofa.

When he set her down, Clark looked at Kala with such love in his eyes that it made Jason's heart tighten. Not with jealousy, for he saw equal love and pride in his father's eyes on a regular basis. No, there was a note of sorrow lurking beneath his expression, something Jason could sense like a piano just _slightly_ out of tune, and he knew the talk with Uncle Bruce hadn't gone well.

_I wish there was something I could do,_ he fretted, for the hundredth time. As it stood he couldn't even go see Tim, although Red Robin had made his way into Titans Tower at least twice since the attack. It had been good to see him up, around, and annoyed; he'd given Jason and Cassie a thorough chewing-out for not updating the log file on their current cases. Much to Tim's surprise, Cassie had hugged him and told him they'd left it just so he had something to complain about. Which wasn't true, but it did mollify Tim and smooth over any awkwardness caused by the cast that was still on his arm.

Sighing, Jason went to get more cutlery, setting the table for four now. He caught his father's eye as he set Kala's place, and they shared a smile. For a moment, everything else—the Titans, Elise, Kala's boyfriend, everything—receded. Both of them knew how precious these moments as a family were.

And then, before it could get too heartwarming, Clark said, "So I hear the Blur was sighted on a case with Superboy again."

"Yup, in Gotham, no less, which is a total no-fly zone these days, but the Blur is no one's obedient soldier," Kala replied cheerily.

Lois chortled. "Yeah, the tabloids whipped up that speculation about 'Blazur' again, only now they're calling it Supeblur. I think they sound equally ridiculous."

Jason and Kala both made retching sounds in perfect unison. "Oh Lord, again? It's not bad enough that they just guess on the 'relationship' between us; they also have to give us the lamest 'ship name ever," Kala complained, wrinkling her nose at her twin.

"See, you have to be specific with it. I just think it's gross. Where do people get this stuff from?" Jason groaned, making a face of his own.

Lois and Clark looked at their nearly-identical expressions of repugnance and broke into laughter, lightening the mood considerably.


	6. When You've Only Got A Hundred Years

**Before you start this chapter, I have to warn you that it'll break your heart. The event that happens has been coming for some time now, but it didn't make it any easier to write. A part of me hates that we did it, but we've always been determined to keep this story as real as possible and hopeful we did the event justice. Hate it us later, but we knew the time was coming for it.**

**I didn't want to leave this note, but I couldn't NOT do it and not warn for potential tears.**

**As we said the other week, we'll be back in two weeks with the next _ATU_ chapter, this week being spent on vacation and plotting. We'll see you guys on May 5.  
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><p>"I trust our guest is sufficiently … composed for us to pay a social call?" the man asked of his companion.<p>

The pretty blonde shrugged one shoulder; she didn't care for their guest or his companion, and her boss knew it. 'Boss' was being technical; they were more partners than anything else, these days. "If you feel it necessary. He ought to have recovered by now. You know I don't think he's trustworthy at the best of times."

"Of course he isn't trustworthy," he chuckled. "No one is. You and I only trust one another from long association and mutual goals, after all."

"Yes, but there's a difference between acknowledging that we're all dangerous and inviting a scorpion into your home," she retorted.

"Apt metaphor," he remarked, but proceeded anyway, pressing a button on the intercom beside his desk. "Forgive me for intruding, but I thought I'd visit … if that wouldn't be much trouble?" he asked.

An accented female voice answered him after a pause. As usual, the dark-haired woman's voice was coldly formal. "It would be no trouble at all. After all, we are most grateful for your hospitality. He is resting now, but in an hour we would be glad to receive you."

"Thank you, my dear," he told her, knowing she hated the endearment. She loathed him as much as the blonde sitting across from him loathed their guest. The only thing the two women disliked more than their opposite's master was each other.

Personally, he was glad that he and the other man had forbidden conflict between their vassals. (That was _his_ word, vassals, and he had adopted it, liking the taste of it on his tongue.) He did not underestimate his colleague's protégé, ever. She was just as deadly as his own blonde bodyguard, perhaps even more so. Letting the pair of them face off would at best end with two valuable assets damaged, and at worst might destroy them both. No, neither of the men would allow that to happen.

Their partnership, if it could be called that, was based on mutual respect for each other's capabilities. His own blinding intelligence was complemented by the other man's wisdom. They had their differences, of course—he found mysticism rather boring, and his guest disdained profit for profit's sake as mere avarice—but enough of their goals aligned to make this partnership fruitful. For now, anyway. None of their set had ever formed long-term associations. Even between mentors and protégés, relations eventually broke down into rivalries. That wasn't a problem for the other side, but then, they spent so much time deluding themselves into believing in things like justice and morality that perhaps they found it easier to convince themselves that sharing _all_ of one's knowledge and power was a _good_ idea.

The allotted hour passed in reflection, his companion musing along her own lines of thought. When the time came, he closed the text he'd been reading and stood up. He stretched, feeling his spine crackle, and reflected that while his mind grew sharper with age, his body did not, and all of the supplements and exercise regimens and everything else only prolonged the inevitable march of time. Not even their guest's fantastic discovery could completely turn back the clock. Nor did he even consider making use of it himself. He wasn't fooled by the talk of extensive rituals; that was all so much mystic mumbo-jumbo, a convenient cloak to cover the fact that after doing whatever he needed to do, the man who wished to turn back time was largely incapacitated for several days. Not a price he would choose to pay, not when his own projects promised a safer way.

With the blonde at his side, he moved through the corridors of the facility with the ease of long familiarity. What they sought had been an accidental perk, discovered when they'd excavated the underground labs six years ago, long before he planned to occupy this facility. At first none of them had realized what it was, even scientific analysis failing to identify the substance bubbling up from a crack in the ground, and the construction crew had sealed off the chamber containing it. It didn't seem dangerous, and they weren't located near any major seismic faults.

The chemical analysis had attracted attention, however. It was of very great interest to one in particular, whom at that time he knew only by hints and whispers. Then again, he knew who most of the other players on his side of the game were—it was hard not to, when most of them yammered for attention in a completely disgraceful manner. Personally, he preferred to keep a façade of legitimacy, though the Lane woman had thoroughly ruined that for him. His corporation still operated freely, she hadn't been able to stop that, but he could not participate in any major way. She was too busy watching for him.

He and his guest both had their enemies, and even if the unknown liquid hadn't drawn the other man's attention to him, the collusion of their foes eventually would have. Most of the people on the other side had gotten organized, and they championed teamwork with their precious League and their Titans. Quite of few on his own side had decided to follow the example, and now the Injustice Society existed. Neither he nor his guest directly participated in it, but they had their contacts and agents within it. The _real_ power players on this side worked alone, or with their own hand-picked teams.

Or sometimes, when both parties were sufficiently powerful to be a significant threat to one another, and when they also had a compelling reason to do so, they might enter into a limited partnership with one another. He smiled, slightly. He had the alien technology and the strange substance bubbling up from the desert floor; his counterpart had a vast store of knowledge and an elite force of minions. A takeover might have seemed like the other's man best strategy, considering the value of the assets in play, but he was wily and very, very careful. So partnership it was, and they had spent several years perfecting the Kryptonian cloning technology and putting it to practical use. Precisely _what_ use the other man made of it, he didn't know, and didn't care to know. The balance of power between them was just where he wanted it, and too much knowledge could be as dangerous as too little.

They arrived at the guest quarters, situated around the chamber which had been excavated and finished by the other man's operatives and according to his specifications. Two guards stood on either side of the door, and one of them knocked for him. He wasn't fooled; if there were two visible guards, then there were six more around somewhere. His guest believed in finding and training the best of the best, and _keeping_ them loyal.

The woman opened the door, giving him a smile that looked welcoming except for her eyes, which held too much caution and dislike for a true smile to reach them. She ushered them in amid the usual pleasantries, and moments later they were seated across from her father as she poured coffee for them all.

He studied the other man keenly; this was the first time he'd witnessed the transformation for himself. When he'd arrived here a week ago, the man before him had walked with a cane, his hair had been gray with white at the temples, and his face had borne the lines of old age. Now his hair was black, just starting to gray at the sides, his skin was smooth, and he seemed more muscular. Even considering the cane, he had moved gracefully before, but now in repose he was the very picture of latent strength. The only thing that remained the same was the green eyes: sharp with intelligence, and terribly haunted.

"So you see, Lex Luthor, the Lazarus Pit bestows its blessings," he intoned.

"I never doubt you, Ra's al Ghul," he replied, adopting the other's formal full-name mode of address.

"And yet you say you are not tempted to sample its powers yourself," Ra's said, reaching for a cup of excellent coffee. He did not look at Talia as he took it and sipped, his eyes fixed on Lex. This was a dangerous moment, for both of them—if Ra's believed his precious Pit was in danger of being usurped, he might try to overthrow Lex, and _he_ had far too much invested here to walk away again without a fight.

Deliberately, Lex shook his head. He decided to go for a measure of honesty; if Ra's was as old as he claimed, he might have the experience to see through even Lex's best deceptions. "No, I'm not. Leaving aside all your warnings, and the extensive preparation and recovery you've told me is necessary, even if I thought you were lying about everything and all I'd have to do to achieve eternal youth is to go swimming in your pool, I'd still say no."

Cocking his head, Ra's asked simply, "Why?"

Mercy tensed beside him; Lex knew there were at least three or four unseen ninja in this room, prepared to strike him down if they could and deal with the consequences later. He'd ensured that Ra's knew that the entire facility would self-destruct upon his death and none of them would get out alive, but the other man might take his chances anyway, with a true Fountain of Youth nearby.

So he sipped his coffee and replied calmly, "I don't like the look of your eyes, Ra's. You seem entirely too _thin_, like a hologram of yourself. I have no idea _what_ that chemical soup actually _does_ to a man, and no desire to test it on myself. You certainly seem to have gained a double-edged blessing, at best."

For a long moment, Ra's merely stared at him. "You are entirely too intelligent for my peace of mind, Lex Luthor. But then, I knew that ere I met you."

Lex simply shrugged one shoulder casually. "Since you surely know my IQ is un-measurable by any test devised by ordinary men, you should be secure in the knowledge that I have no desire to upset our current arrangement. I find it much too mutually beneficial for that."

"As do I," Ra's said. He and Lex indulged in a little small talk, both careful not to reveal too much in case the other had not yet learned it, but the actions of both the League and the Injustice Society were well known to them both.

The entire time the two men spoke, Mercy and Talia glared each other down. They'd taken an instant dislike to one another, and though both were normally good at disguising hatred, once they both knew their masters had forbidden a fight, their only means of competition was in contemptuous glares.

…

Ben Hubbard half-woke in wee hours of the morning and got out of bed, heading for the bathroom. That was not an uncommon occurrence lately, and his doctor said it was normal for a man his age. Enlarged prostate, the doc had said, benign but annoying. He'd told Martha in serious tones that he was becoming one of his dogs, compelled to mark his territory every so often. She had laughed—and warned him away from her newel post. Barkley the beagle had been dead for years, but she'd never forgotten that incident.

When Ben was a child, he'd been afraid of getting old. As a young man, he'd thought old age was pitiable. In middle age, he'd begun to look forward to retirement. Now that he _was_ old, he found it more of a nuisance than anything else. The petty annoyances began to wear on a man, after a while—the forgetfulness, the health problems, the way he got tired more easily every year. Sure, he and Martha both stayed active physically and mentally, but there was no escaping the fact of his mortality. Slowly but surely, his body was wearing out. His heart had a murmur, his hearing was fading, his joints ached, and his digestion grew more finicky each year.

And, of course, he spent more time in the bathroom, staring out the window, taking five minutes to complete what had once been a matter of seconds. Far away across the dark fields he could see a glow of light: the windows of the Hubbard house, where his two sons and their families resided. Like a lot of farmhouses in the area, the Hubbard home had been built to house multiple generations of large families. It had been quite simple for his two boys to divide it into a duplex for their own needs, putting in a second kitchen and some extra bathrooms. Hardworking boys, they were, gladly living the life of their forefathers even though farming was no longer profitable most of the time. At least one of Ben's grandchildren had decided to stay on at the old family place, so the farm was safe for another generation.

It was always sad to watch the kids heading off to the big city, but that was part of life. There were more opportunities out there, more jobs, more money. Ben couldn't blame them. He'd taken a job in Kansas City himself one summer, and had enjoyed broadening his horizons, but nothing the city had to offer could compete with the land his great-grandparents had settled. They had been English immigrants looking for farmland in the wide-open west, and they'd found rich fields and bright streams here, land that still called to his heart. Over the years they had intermarried with the Germans and Swedes who'd come to Kansas looking for a new start, resulting in a singularly American blend. With his grandson's choice to stay on the land, that made six generations of Hubbards born and raised on the farm.

His business completed, Ben stopped musing on history, washed his hands, and went back to bed. It was odd that none of the beagles were pushing against his ankles, demanding attention. They were used to his middle-of-the-night bathroom trips by now and didn't bark, but any time he got up they usually begged to be petted. He was still half-asleep, though, and paid it no mind as he turned back the covers.

"Just me, Martha," he murmured as he always did, stroking her shoulder. Lately she'd become a light sleeper, and while he didn't always wake her when he got up, his return to bed often did. Speaking to her soothed her back to sleep before she could fully waken.

Ben paused, sitting on the bed, his hand on his wife's shoulder. She was too still. "Martha?" he asked, softly.

No answer. No soft sound of breathing. And that stillness … Ben pressed his fingertips against her wrist, then the side of her throat, carefully at first.

No pulse, either.

She was gone.

Grief came, but not in a blinding torrent like he'd felt before, with other losses. It was deep and strong, but he couldn't say it was shocking the way losing Sally had been. They were well past eighty, now, and Martha had had some trouble with her kidneys the last few months, had changed up her medications a few times because of side effects. Ben let the wave of grief carry him along, not bothering to suppress the way his shoulders shook or the tears that gathered in his eyes. He knew he was grieving for himself, left behind, and not for the woman he loved, who had passed quietly in her sleep with a slight smile curving her mouth.

When he composed himself, he sighed, "Well, then," and took her hand in his. Her fingers were just slightly cool, and he kissed the backs of her knuckles gently. There was no fear in him; death held no terror. Some people might have been unnerved to touch a dead body, but not Ben. The essential Martha, the woman he loved, was already on her way to a better place—might even be there already, saving him a seat at a bridge game like the ones he and Sally and she and Jonathan had played together, long ago. What she left behind didn't frighten him any more than holding onto a jacket Martha that had taken off.

There were things that had to be done and calls that had to be made, but for the moment Ben simply held her hand, stroking her silver hair back off her forehead, and thought back over their lives together. The oldest memories were clearest: Martha, a strong-willed teenager with intense blue eyes and gorgeous blonde pin-curls. She'd been one of the smartest girls he'd ever met, and he was as surprised as Jonathan Kent when Martha went out with him. Of course, Ben had met Sally around the same time, and they'd double-dated together, meeting at the diner or the soda fountain and sometimes going on picnics.

He remembered making Jonathan and Martha godparents of his sons, the delight in Martha's eyes the first time she held the eldest boy. Then the long years when the Kent place need a child around to liven it up, but no child came. The quiet sadness in Martha's expression as Ben and Sally's boys passed the milestones of childhood, while she and Jonathan were alone.

And then Clark came, the son of some out-of-state cousin of Martha's. No one in town had ever gotten the full story—Jonathan had stoutly insisted, "He's our son now and that's all that matters"—but Ben had supposed like everyone else that girl in question might not have been married to the father of her child, and eventually the scandal got to her. Luckily for everyone, the Kents wanted a child, and they'd never treated Clark as anything but their own. Most people in town had probably forgotten that he was adopted.

Martha had come into her own as a mother. No one who saw her could doubt the immense pride and joy that Clark brought to her life. Ben had also noticed that he'd been an unusual boy, not as prone to mischief as others his age, serious and studious. Jonathan and Martha had loved him with every fiber of themselves. They'd been happiest together as parents, and though Ben had been absorbed in raising his own sons, he'd loved to see the bright smiles on their faces every time their paths crossed.

Then came Jonathan's heart attack. Martha had been heartbroken, staying strong only because her son was completely grief-stricken. The boy had blamed himself somehow, and Martha couldn't break down in front of him, needing to guide Clark out of self-recrimination. Ben had been there for her then. Martha as a widow had dedicated herself to Clark and to keeping up the farm the way Jonathan would've wanted, which eventually necessitated Clark getting a job in the city. Only Kansas City wasn't big enough for him; Clark had gone all the way to the East Coast, to Metropolis.

And what treasures he'd brought back from there! By the time Ben finally married Martha—which seemed to the two of them like a foregone conclusion, with Jonathan and Sally both gone ahead of them, and no need to rush—Clark was planning his own wedding to the redoubtable Lois Lane. Ben had adored the dark-haired woman with her flashing eyes and sharp wit; even more he'd adored the two grandkids. He had indeed been blessed to be part of Martha's life, to be able to put his hand on Clark's shoulder and call him 'son', to have the twins look up at him and call him Grandpa Ben.

The last decade and a half held many memories that belonged to just himself and Martha, though, and they scrolled through Ben's mind like photographs. The sunrise reflecting on a rippling stream, fish rising to lip the surface in search of food. The creak of saddle-leather and the rustle of hounds moving through the brush, then the full-throated bay of the beagles when they caught the scent. Puttering around in the kitchen with Martha, the house filling with delicious scents as they cooked. And lying right here beside her, his arm over her waist as they both dropped off to sleep.

It had been a good life, he thought, and smiled as he squeezed Martha's fingers gently. Another memory came to him then, of a conversation they'd had about a year ago. He'd just come back to bed, awakening her, and Martha had told him about a dream she'd been having. "I was at a church supper, Ben, but in a church much bigger than either of the ones here in town. It seemed like everyone I'd ever known was there, and I didn't notice it at the time but they were all people who've passed on. My parents, your brother who died in the war, Jonathan of course, and Sally. She was holding a baby, and I didn't realize it right away, but it was the baby she lost back when you two were just starting out. Martin Lang was there, too. "

Ben had merely nodded, holding her hand just like this and letting her talk. At the time, Martin Lang had recently passed, of complications after knee-replacement surgery. Annette had been a frequent guest at the Kent farmhouse, and Ben had supposed Martha's dream was related to all the reminiscing the two women had been doing. She'd continued telling him about it, her voice soft with wonder. "Ella Lane came up and hugged me and introduced me to her husband. My first-grade teacher told me she was proud of me. It went on and on, so many happy reunions. We were all drinking some kind of punch that was clear as water, but it tasted just like the first warm breeze in springtime. And there were tables full of food, all kinds of dishes, some of them things I'd never seen before but every bite was delicious. Everyone was laughing and talking, just so happy to be together.

"I'd just stopped to talk to my grandmother when Shelby jumped up on me. And he wasn't alone, my favorite cat who slept on my pillow for seventeen years was with him, and Blackie leaped up to my shoulders and put his forehead against my cheek and purred so loud, I thought my whole head would start shaking! I laughed and petted him, and rubbed Shelby's ears … and then I woke up and it was Sadie licking my hand instead of Shelby."

The two of them had sat in companionable silence for a moment, before Ben had finally said, "Well, my dear, it sounds like you had a little glimpse of Heaven."

She'd chuckled, and kissed his cheek. "Either that or I have a very good imagination." They'd never spoken of it again, and Ben wondered now if Martha was at that feast again, telling all of their friends and family that this time she'd come to stay, not just to visit.

He bent carefully to kiss her forehead. The time for reminiscence was over. "All right, love. I've got business to take care of. Tell everyone up there I said hello." His voice was curiously hoarse, but Ben managed to keep his composure. There _were_ things to be done, beginning with the call he dreaded making.

…

Lois was a heavy sleeper, but the loud ringing of Kal-El's cell phone penetrated her dreams. Slowly waking, she heard his slumber-thick voice answer, and then suddenly grow sharp. "Ben? What—? _No!_"

The note of shock and fear in her husband's voice worked better than coffee to awaken her. Lois sat up, aware of a breeze in the room, pulling the sheets up to her chest. "Kal-El?" she murmured, but he was already gone.

Another spike of adrenaline brought her to full awareness. Whatever had caused him to leave in such a hurry had to be something major. His cell phone was lying on the bed; Lois picked it up and dialed the farmhouse.

No one answered. Trepidation began to slide over into fear as Lois dialed Ben's cell. _Please don't let this be what I think it is. And please don't let him have done what I think he just did._

…

Kal-El ignored the ringing phone as he burst into the farmhouse. The front door had been unlocked, as usual, and in his haste he flung it open hard enough that it bounced off the wall. He was up the stairs without setting foot to them, at the bedroom door a second later, and Ben still had the phone in his hand. He looked up, shocked, as Kal-El hurried to his mother's side. "Clark, what…?" the older man trailed off, perplexed.

Dimly, Kal-El was aware he'd made a mistake. Ben had said _come to Smallville as soon as you can_, but he couldn't have imagined Clark would be there in mere seconds. At the moment he didn't care about the secret. Everything could be explained later.  
>"We have to get her to the hospital," he told Ben urgently, bending to lift his mother's prone form.<p>

"No, Clark—" Ben began, but Kal-El cut him off.

"There's still time, I can get her there!"

Ben hand caught his forearm, squeezing as tightly as he could. He couldn't pull away without hurting Ben, so he stopped and actually listened for just a moment. Ben was staring into his eyes, speaking in a low, serious tone. "Son, no. It's too late. She's already gone."

"But…." He touched his mother's cheek, felt the coolness of her skin—saw the smile on her face, the expression of content and peace upon her features. "Ma," he whispered, and collapsed more than sat in the nearest chair.

One hand on his shoulder, Ben said quietly, "It's gonna be all right, son. None of us expected to live forever, you know. She went peaceful, like she wanted to."

Kal-El's breath hitched. Decades ago, when he had landed on this planet in a fiery meteor and toddled up out of an impact crater, this woman had held her arms out to him. A naked child walking out of a smoking ruin, and she had picked him up and held him to her breast immediately, instinctively. To her, he had been a miracle, and it was largely her image of him that had shaped his image of himself.

What if he had been met with fear by the first humans who found him? What if the first revelations of his strength and other powers had branded him dangerous instead of wonderful? Who would he be now, if he'd been met by anyone but Martha Kent? Much of the man he was today was owed to the love of both of his parents, but Martha had been the first person on Earth to see him, first to touch him, first to love him and claim him as her own son. His shoulders shook, and he buried his face in his hands.

Ben rubbed his shoulders gently. "It's okay to cry. No shame in crying for a woman so well-loved and wonderful. No shame at all." His own voice had grown thick with tears of his own, and Kal-El reached for him blindly.

In the darkened bedroom, waiting for the officials to arrive and tell them what they already knew, stepfather and stepson took comfort in each other's presence, and neither bothered to ask or explain how Clark had gotten there so quickly.

…

In spite of Martha's age, the news left the family in shock. When Lois finally got through to the farmhouse and had her worst suspicions confirmed, she could only sit and stare at the phone for a while. Martha Kent, who had at first been bristling with antagonism toward her for keeping the twins secret for six years, had quickly mellowed into a loving mother-in-law. The twins had been a constant source of joy and pride to her, and the two women had compared notes on raising half versus full Kryptonians. Over time they'd become close, and as the friendship between Ella and Martha deepened, Lois began to consider Martha another mom of sorts. She was always ready with coffee, a hug, some motherly advice, or the occasional scolding, all of which Lois appreciated.

When she managed to wrap her mind around the facts, she began to worry. Kal-El had flown out there, probably arriving just seconds after Ben told him what had happened. She needed to concoct a cover story, because Kal-El certainly wasn't in the right frame of mind to do so. Fretting over that, Lois promised to handle the rest of the calls herself, letting Ben and Kal-El deal with the situation in Smallville.

There was no debate about waking the Whites, with as close as they'd been to Martha. Lois called them first, getting Lana on the second ring. The redhead's pained cry of surprise woke Richard when the phone didn't, and once Lois explained the situation to them both, Richard started planning a flight to Smallville. Lois wouldn't be able to join them immediately; the _Daily Planet_ needed her, with Clark gone, but she would take a day or two for the service.

She emailed Lucy next. Luce had grown fond of Martha too, and deserved to know, but probably didn't want to wake up at this hour. And then Lois sighed and made the two calls she _least_ wanted to make: to the twins.

Kala was still awake, and Lois made sure Sebast was with her before she told her daughter what had happened. He wound up taking the phone when Kala started crying, and assured Lois, "We'll be on the next plane to Kansas, Mom. Screw the tour. They can manage without us for a couple shows."

Jason was sound asleep, and Lois had to talk to him a bit to make sure he was conscious and coherent before giving him the news. He sniffled, too, and asked after Dad. When Lois told him Kal-El had flown to Smallville immediately, he picked up on her worry. "We're gonna have to do damage-control there," he said.

"Or maybe not," Lois sighed, having come to that conclusion herself. "I feel like an ass trying to lie to Ben right after this. If he figures it out, he figures it out, and we'll deal with that. It's still possible he might not even notice."

With calls made, Lois glanced at the clock and sighed. At this hour she might as well get up and make coffee. She wasn't going to get any more useful sleep.

…

Jason was in Smallville the next day, along with Lana and Richard, leaving Kristin with Lois to arrive just before the funeral. Kala and Sebast were there even before the rest of the family, having taken a red-eye flight and rented a car. Dad, of course, had been there from the moment he knew.

The funeral was three days after Martha's passing, and the time between was filled to the brim. During those three days, half the town dropped by the farmhouse to pay their respects. Most of them brought food, which Jason remembered happening after Nana's passing, too. No one in the family had felt like cooking with their matriarch gone, so the covered dishes and cold cuts had been very welcome.

As Jason soon learned, Smallville took the tradition to a higher level. Not just relatives and close friends, but people Jason had only met casually came to the farmhouse, and most of them did more than bring food. A group of women including Annette Lang came over while Ben and Clark were at the funeral home going over the details, and they cleaned the house from top to bottom. Martha had always kept it neat and sparkling, but Annette insisted there had to be a cleansing after a death, and no one gainsaid her.

The Hubbard boys came over with their kids and offered to handle the farm chores. Ben declined, wanting to keep some normalcy in his daily routine, but he ended up accepting their help anyway when he found himself too bogged down by funeral arrangements to get the animals fed.

Ben had to make multiple trips to town, and the farm truck wasn't the most reliable vehicle in the world, so Dustin quietly left his Cavalier at the farm when the Carmichaels came to visit. Jason hugged him for it, and Dustin had just hugged him back, neither of them really having words that day.

The wake was held at the house the night before the funeral. Lois and Kristin arrived in time for it, and the little redhead wound up in Ben's lap for most of the evening. Everyone had a story to share, and Jason found himself surprised by tears again and again. It was the first time in years anyone had seen Kala without eye makeup, which would've been pointless to wear considering the amount of sniffling she was doing.

The biggest shock for Jason was seeing who walked in, escorted by Dustin. At first he thought he was seeing things, too bogged down by grief and hallucinating the comfort he wished for. But then Elise walked directly up to him and hugged him tight. Jason squeezed her close, sighing against her hair. "Thank you," he whispered.

"I'm so sorry, Jason. I know how much you love her," she murmured back. She stayed by his side for the rest of the evening, but she'd checked into the only motel in town and had to leave eventually. Elise assured him she'd be at the funeral, though, and that gave him strength. Especially since he had a somewhat larger role than he'd expected, but the honor wasn't one he would've ever refused.

…

The funeral was held the next morning, and the church was standing-room-only. Flowers filled the space, their perfume noticeable but not overwhelming. The issue of who would be pallbearers had already been decided: Clark, Ben's two sons, and Jason were all obvious choices. They needed at least two more, and Richard was honored to be asked. "Ask Kala," Jason suggested, while his sister listened in from six rooms away, burrowed into Sebast's arms in a solemn little ball of unhappiness.

"Pallbearers are usually only men," Ben's older son had informed him.

"This family does things a little differently," Ben had said, his voice without a trace of sorrow for the first time.

He not only asked Kala to be an actual pallbearer, he invited Lois and Lana to be honorary pallbearers, walking in procession with the casket but not actually doing any lifting. "Martha Kent strikes a blow for feminism," Kala murmured to her mom, and Lois managed a rusty chuckle.

Once the church service was completed, the pallbearers walked the coffin out of the church. Kala was very conscious of the eyes on her. She'd toned down her makeup to an absolute minimum, worn the most conservation black dress she owned, but the two purple streaks at her temples weren't going anywhere. She'd tamed her wavy hair into a sleek updo that minimized the streaks, but she though Grandma would've appreciated the dash of color anyway.

As she walked, one hand on the coffin as it rolled along the aisle on a wheeled carrier, she felt the solemnity of it all pressing down on her. This was Martha's body, the woman who had shaped her father's life. Only a few weeks ago Kala herself had been in Smallville, eating cookies shaped by the hands that now lay still and cold in this polished wooden box. Martha, who had supported them all physically, emotionally, and mentally over the years, now relied on them to support her for this final journey. It was profound and awful, in the old sense of the word: the duty inspired awe.

At the hearse, the pallbearers moved as one to lift the coffin and slide it inside. Kala was surprised by the weight of it; Martha had been a slight woman in her older years, and Ben had rejected the idea of an enormous, ostentatious casket. "That isn't her style," he'd said to the funeral director, who had tried only once to up-sell them. "Why, she'd probably come back just to scold me if I put her in something with gold-plated handles. Martha wouldn't see sense in spending money that could buy a car on something we'll only use one time, and she'll never see."

The funeral procession was one of the longest Smallville had ever seen, traffic through town completely vanishing as all the vehicles followed the hearse. When they arrived at the cemetery, the funeral home's rolling cart wasn't working properly. "We'll carry her," Clark said, his voice low and rough with unshed tears. Without further ado, they lifted the casket and crossed the sparse ground to the gravesite. Kala knew that her brother and father were taking more of the weight than they needed, sparing the rest. But she was glad they let her lift, too, let her share some of the burden. That was what this duty was truly about, sharing the weight of grief.

The graveside service was brief, and Kala didn't remember most of it. She was holding Jason's hand on one side, Sebast taking her other hand. It was a beautiful day, sunny but not hot enough to wilt the flowers beside the grave. All of them paid their last respects, and the family stayed while the rest of the mourners left. All of them were holding hands, supporting each other.

Ben spoke quietly, and Kala couldn't tell if he was talking to the rest of them or to Martha at first. "I don't fear death," he said. "Neither did she. We've lived good long lives, and I'll go to my rest gladly when it's my time, same as she did. And I'll go knowing that I helped leave the world a little better than I found it, because I had a hand in making this family. Nothing on this earth is more precious than the love we share. Martha wouldn't want to me mope around, she'd want me to keep on. And she'd want me to tell you all that I'm grateful to have been part of your lives."

"Amen," said his younger son, but Ben was looking directly at Clark when he said the last part. Kala caught his gaze, and he tipped her the barest flicker of a wink. _So Ben knows,_ she thought distractedly, remembering Jason's whispered news that Dad had flown out here when he got the call. Kala didn't have the energy to get worked up over it. If anyone deserved to know the truth, Ben did.

"Ben," Mom began, her voice faltering.

He only smiled. "You don't have to explain anything to me, Lois. Here and now, we're together as a family, and that's as she wanted it. I'll see to it this family continues to stay strong together long after I've gone to join her."

* * *

><p><em>I'm fifteen for a moment,<br>Caught in between ten and twenty  
>And I'm just dreaming<br>Counting the ways to where you are._

_I'm twenty two for a moment,  
>She feels better than ever<br>And we're on fire,  
>Making our way back from Mars.<em>

_Fifteen, there's still time for you.  
>Time to buy and time to lose.<br>Fifteen, there's never a wish better than this  
>When you only got hundred years to live.<em>

_I'm thirty three for a moment,  
>Still the man, but you see I'm a 'they'.<br>A kid on the way,  
>A family on my mind.<em>

_I'm forty five for a moment,  
>The sea is high<br>And I'm heading into a crisis,  
>Chasing the years of my life.<em>

_Fifteen, there's still time for you.  
>Time to buy, time to lose yourself<br>Within a morning star .  
>Fifteen, I'm all right with you.<br>Fifteen, there's never a wish better than this  
>When you only got a hundred years to live.<em>

_Half time goes by,  
>Suddenly you're wise.<br>Another blink of an eye,  
>Sixty seven is gone.<br>The sun is getting high,  
>We're moving on.<em>

_I'm ninety nine for a moment,  
>Dying for just another moment,<br>And I'm just dreaming  
>Counting the ways to where you are.<em>

_Fifteen, there's still time for you.  
>Twenty-two, I feel her, too.<br>Thirty-three, you're on your way,  
>Every day's a new day.<em>

_Fifteen, there's still time for you.  
>Time to buy and time to choose.<br>Hey fifteen, there's never a wish better than this  
>When you only got hundred years to live…<em>

Five for Fighting_, 1oo Years_


	7. Always Darkest Before The Dawn

The wake, the funeral, and the official reception afterwards took a lot more out of Elise than she expected. She'd been in Smallville before and liked Martha, but her connection to the older woman wasn't as strong as Jason's or Kala's or even Kristin's. Still, to be surrounded by such profound and sincere grief for so long was taxing.

And then, too, she was supporting Jason. He looked like a miserable puppy to her, stunned and solemn, and Elise found herself watching over him to make sure he remembered to eat. She hated leaving him at the farmhouse after the wake and going back to the hotel, but she knew exactly what would happen if she stayed: she'd wind up in bed with him, telling herself she was just going to hold him and comfort him. It would turn into more than that, and then when she went back to California she'd break his heart all over again.

She _hated_ being the heartbreaker. But even more than that, she hated the little voice somewhere deep inside telling her to quit Berkeley, transfer back East, and stay with him. She hated the way no one was surprised to see her, as if she was already his wife and they all expected her to be by his side. Miranda Elise Thorne was no one's accessory, no one's foregone conclusion.

No matter how much she wanted to be, sometimes. Above everything else, she kept hearing her mother say, _You're nineteen, honey. There's a whole world out there you've never seen. Don't close the door on it just yet, please._

Her parents had never quite warmed to Jason and his family, and Elise couldn't tell them that the reason they were kind of weird and secretive was that they were actually aliens—but in a good way. Really. Yeah, that would go over well.

At least the reception was finally winding down. Jason sagged into a chair, and Elise sat on the arm of it, rubbing his shoulder. "It's gonna be all right," she said softly. "I know it doesn't feel like that now, but it will be."

"I know," he sighed, and took her hand. Looking up at her, he smiled wanly and said, "Thank you for being here."

She ran a hand through his hair—thoroughly tamed for the funeral, but returning to its natural tousled state now—and smiled right back. "Hey, what are friends for?"

"You're more than a friend," Jason said automatically.

"Not right now I'm not," Elise told him, fighting the urge to bite her lip. Crying wasn't going to do anyone any favors right now.

His eyes looked far older than he was, and full of sadness. "I have plenty of friends. But there's only one of you, Elise. You know more … and you care more. Even when you try to hide it."

Elise closed her eyes and sighed. She wasn't going to fight with him, not right now. "Fine. I'm not an ordinary friend, I'll give you that. But I'm not staying, Jason."

"I know." His voice claimed acceptance, but his eyes said he was hoping she'd change her mind. And she had to admit, it was tempting to just let this happen, like it was some kind of destiny.

…

The way Sebast figured it, Alan's stint as Kala's boyfriend was over from the moment they got back from the funeral. He was _still_ being a passive aggressive little bitch, just when Kala needed support the most, and though they hung on for a couple days, it all ended in a huge argument after a show.

Sebast heard the yelling and headed out of the hotel and across the road to a drugstore. By the time a fuming Kala returned to their room, he had two pints of top-grade ice cream and the most recent DVD from their favorite horror collection. Kala saw it and gave a hitching laugh. "Oh, yeah. Nothing better for getting over a douche-nozzle than Ben & Jerry's and _Chupacabra 666: The Devil's Goatsucker_. How bad can this one be, you think?"

"No worse than _Bride of the Goatsucker_," he said with a shrug. So they sat around and watched terrible Mexican horror, ate ice cream, and mocked bad acting. Sebast's impression of the 'Satanic high priest' finally made her laugh, especially when he grabbed her shirt and shook her. "I don't know the difference between Mayan gods, Incan gods, and the Christian devil, but I know we've gotta have a creepy old man to balance out the half-naked teenagers! _Summon the goatsucker!_"

When the credits rolled, Kala found the remote and paused the TV, her expression torn between hilarity, disgust, and disbelief. "That was such shit," she finally said. "God, _Bride_ at least knew it was a T&A exploitation flick. This … what the hell were they thinking?"

"I'm thinking all the profits from _Chupacabra 3D: Goatsucker's Revenge_ went up their noses," Sebast offered, miming snorting something. "How does a franchise go from pretty good to pretty crappy to pretty great, and then slide right down the toilet like this? _Bride of the Goatsucker_ and _Son of the Goatsucker_ were predictable, yeah, but at least they were watchable."

"Makes me wonder what they'll do for the seventh one. _If_ they can get funding for a seventh one."

"Makes _me_ wonder who played the Spanish priest at the end. The ending sucks, yeah, but he's a hottie." Sebast waggled his eyebrows, and Kala rolled her eyes. She un-paused it and let the credits scroll, Sebast leaning forward. "Jon … K something, they're scrolling too fast."

Kala recognized it, though. "_Him_? He's a model! No wonder he can't act for shit. He has like one five-minute scene in some art-house film. How the hell did he get into the Chupacabra series?"

"I don't care if he can act, _chula_," Sebast told her, and she threw a pillow at him. That quickly degenerated into a pillow fight, which Sebast let Kala win.

Afterward, as they lay snuggled together, Kala heaved a sigh. "How come all my relationships crash and burn?"

"You're asking me?" Sebast murmured with a shrug. "_Chula_, I don't do relationships anymore. There's too many gorgeous boys out there. It'd be unfair if I tied myself down to one."

She bopped his nose affectionately. "Yeah, but you're a slut, Sebast."

"I know. I'm proud to be a man-slut. It's my calling in life. But you … maybe it's just hard to find a man worthy of all this awesomeness." He ran a hand down her side, and Kala purred happily, snuggling in closer.

"I can live with being single as long as I have my best friend forever," Kala murmured drowsily.

"You'll always have me, _mi_ Kala. I'm impossible to get rid of. Like herpes." That got another laugh, and then she fell asleep with her head on his shoulder.

It looked like he'd just about managed to keep Kala from the worst of her post-break-up moods. But Sebast had something in mind to really brighten her smile. Later, once she was deeply asleep, he'd make a call.

…

Clark was still at the farmhouse three days after the funeral. He kept finding little things that needed to be done: a board that had to be nailed back in, a light bulb that had burned out, a slow-running drain. Ben watched him with amusement, and finally walked out to the chicken coop that Clark was re-roofing with a beer for each of them. "Come sit on the porch a spell, Clark. I need to talk to you."

So this was when they'd finally talk about what Ben surely knew by now. Clark had been nervous, but now he felt relieved. Over the last few days, every time he got ready to say something, someone would call or drop by. So he took the moment to sit down and discuss it with gratitude. "Ben, I know you have to have some questions."

Ben sipped his beer slowly. "Course I do. The main one on my mind is, what are we going to do with the farm?"

That came out of left field. "Huh … what?"

The older man looked at him with a grin. "C'mon now, Clark. I don't see you and Lois moving out here. I know you love it, but I don't think either of you could live full time in Smallville. And I'm not getting any younger, either, so I won't always be here. Someone's got to keep the place up, and I've only got the one grandson who'll be staying on at my family place. Besides, I want to keep this one in Kent hands. That means someone's got to stay on the land."

"Oh. Right." Clark sipped his beer, still trying to catch up to the conversation they were having, instead of the one he'd expected to have.

Ben leaned back in the old bentwood rocker. "You can't leave an old house like this standing empty. Houses need life in them, Clark. Especially if they've had life in them for over a hundred years. When they stand empty, they get lonely. They fall in on themselves. This place needs a caretaker for when I'm gone."

"Um, well…."

"I'm thinking of setting up a living trust so your twins will get the farm when I pass on. Now, I know Kala's never going to live in Kansas—too much gypsy in that one to settle down here—but Jason might. I asked him while he was here, and he said he loves the old place. I'm not sure what exactly his plans for the future are going to be, where he wants to work and such, but it sounds like he can work anywhere if he wants, as long as he can get hold of a computer. And if he winds up teaching, well, commuting will be easier for him than it will for most people, right?"

"Um, yeah. But not as easy as it is for me. Ben, I really—" Clark began, and Ben waved him off.

"Listen, boy. You are Martha's son, and you always will be, all right? I knew you were adopted. From the looks of things you came from a little further away that North Dakota, but that doesn't matter to me. I'm telling you, as your stepfather, you don't need to make any apologies to me for not having said anything earlier."

Clark decided to try one more time to explain. "I just don't want you to think we deliberately excluded you, Ben. No one was ever told—everyone who knows found out on their own, even the kids. When it got to be over half a dozen people, we decided not to tell anyone, ever, for their safety if not mine."

Ben shrugged. "Makes sense. If you're smart enough to figure it out, you're probably smart enough to keep your mouth shut. And I do understand, Clark. You've got Lois and the kids to think of. Never telling anyone is the best policy."

"Well, we did tell one person," Clark finally admitted. "Ella Lane. She figured out who the twins' father was before Lois and I got back together, and she wasn't going to believe Clark Kent was their father when she knew Kala could hear through two closed doors and Jason could break indestructible toys."

To his surprise, Ben chuckled. "Now, I can see that. I wouldn't want to cross Ella Lane. Anyone can tell where Lois got her fire from." With that, he held his beer bottle out to Clark, and gave him a knowing smile. "To secrets well kept, and secrets shared, and to family, always. Hmm?"

"I'll drink to that," Clark said. He clinked the bottles together and both men took a long drink. Clark remembered sitting on this same porch with Jonathan, sipping much more gingerly, and having the same feeling of warm companionship.

"Now, about the farm," Ben said, and this time Clark was able to follow the conversation much more easily.

…

Kala was pretty much a morning person, but Sebast's enthusiasm that day was just getting to be too much. He was up _early_, and decided that the only thing they could possibly do was go to the airport and watch the planes landing and taking off. Before she was even dressed, he was pouncing on her like a deranged squirrel. "C'mon, _mamita_, it always cheers you up, and I know you've been dragging a little lately. It'll be fun. I'll even buy you that pumpkin caramel frappuchino thing you like from the coffee shop."

She couldn't tell him why she'd always loved the airport: flight was the superpower she'd always wanted most. Now that she had it, planes weren't the thrill they once were, not when she could fly faster and higher and make sharper turns. Also, passenger jet pilots frowned on doing barrel rolls midflight, while Kala could do as many rolls, swoops, and dives as she had time for.

Still, she had to admit that taking a break helped. They sat in rocking chairs conveniently placed by the concourse's windows, sipped coffee, and watched people as much as they watched planes. "Oh my. I love her hair," Kala said, nodding at a young woman with bright burgundy locks.

"Mm-hmm. It'd look good in your streaks," Sebast remarked, scanning the concourse. "Now me, I like … holy shit, what's this cowboy doing in San Francisco? Looking for the rest of the Village People?"

Kala turned to look in the same direction, and her jaw dropped. Walking up the concourse with a backpack over one shoulder—and a cowboy hat on his head—was a very familiar figure. He was completely out of place in this context, as strange as seeing a whitetail buck walking across a shopping center parking lot. "Holy … Dustin? _Dustin's_ here?"

For a moment she couldn't breathe. Dustin saw her and grinned, and Kala's heart clenched in her chest like a fist. No one had touched her heart quite like Dustin. Not Nick, not Alan, not any high-school crush. He _got_ her in ways that only Sebast did, and while their tastes in music and other things were vastly different, it had never come between them.

She just blinked, staring, and he tilted his head to the side and raised his eyebrows, the grin becoming uncertain. That look had always melted her heart, and this time it broke her shocked paralysis.

Getting to her feet, Kala smiled broadly and held her arms out. Dustin stopped where he was and did the same. And then, laughing, they ran at each other, Dustin dropping the bag and sweeping Kala into his arms, swinging her around. "Well, hello, beautiful! Fancy seeing you here."

"Oh my God, Dustin!" she laughed, and gave him a smooch when he set her down. "But _what_ are you doing here? Don't you have to work?"

Dustin hugged her tight and kissed her cheek. "Nah. Dad and Wade can run the shop. Thing is, I realized something. Lots of people wait 'til they retire to go see the world, and by then they're too old to really enjoy it. I figure I'll get my sightseeing done early. That is, if you'll let me fall in with your band."

That was when it clicked for Kala. She turned around slowly and stared at Sebast, who had ambled up to them carrying both their drinks. "Hey, Dustin, good to see you." He held out a fist, which Dustin dutifully bumped.

"Good to see you too, Sebast," he replied.

"Sebast called you," Kala said flatly.

Dustin jostled her, his arm still around her shoulders. "Hey now. Yeah, he called me. But he just wanted me to call you up. Coming out here to see you was my idea. I haven't bought my return tickets yet, so if you're too busy I'll just…."

Kala didn't let him finish the sentence, kissing him on the lips this time. "You are _more_ than welcome to hang around with us for as long as you want, Dustin. Honestly, I probably need you in my life right now more than ever. This tour is _insane_, and you—you're the best cure for that kind of madness I know of."

"So you're telling me I'm the sanest guy you know?" he asked, with an amused chuckle. Dustin looked directly at Sebast then, and added very seriously, "Somehow that doesn't surprise me."

"We're all mad here, my friend," Sebast told him, and they all laughed.

"C'mon, let's get your luggage and bring you back to meet the band," Kala said, linking one arm through each boy's elbow and tugging them down the concourse. "But Dustin, that hat … what's with the hat, anyway?"

"I figured I was coming out west, why not dress the part?" Dustin sounded perfectly sincere, but the gleam in his eyes told her volumes.

"You are _not_ playing ignorant yokel for the band," she declared, and then her phone and Sebast's chirped simultaneously.

Sebast, who had a hand free, checked his first. "It's Morgan. He found us a bassist, says he's good, but he wants us to meet him. Hey, know what? We should introduce Dustin as our manager, see what this Robb guy does. Dustin, you can play ignorant yokel all you want, it's just entertaining to watch some of these bitches act like they're so high and mighty."

"If Kala doesn't want me to, I won't. But the hat stays. I kinda like it. Besides, I can ride a horse, shoot, and repair fence. I might as well be a cowboy."

"Except for the _cow_ part," Kala said, pouting. Sebast might think it was funny to watch other people look down their noses at Dustin and his country accent, but it made her blood boil just as wrathfully as when people in Smallville looked askance at Sebast's eyeliner.

"Yeah, well, I might have some trouble with the cow part of things," Dustin admitted, and then grinned. "I do like the hat, though."

Kala rolled her eyes and sighed heavily. "_Boys!_ Why do I even bother? Fine, wear the cowboy hat. Just get used to the fact that we play Goth rock on the tour bus, not country."

Dustin managed to slide his arm out from hers just to put it around her shoulder and tug her into a sideways walking hug. "Y'know, I find I like a little Goth rock in my life. It grows on you." Kala smiled up at him, and that was when he added with a very serious tone, "Kind of like a fungus."

Kala punched him lightly in the side. "Jerk."

"Missed you too, Kala."

…

On the way to the meeting, Perry glanced at Lois' planner and snorted. "Good grief, Lane, how the hell do expect to run this paper if you don't know how to spell the 'board' in 'board meeting'?"

She cut him a ruthless smile. "I have no intention of running this paper. I'll just figure out a way to keep you alive forever—even if it's just your head in a cryo-tank or something—so I never have to become full management."

"Still doesn't explain why a Pulitzer Prize winner thinks that 'board' has an 'e' in it," Perry grumbled.

"That's not a misspelling, old man. It's an accurate description, from where I sit." With that she stepped past him as he held the door, the plainly marking 'bored meeting' on her planner making her opinion of these administrative duties clear.

"Get used to it, Lane," Perry barked, smiling beneath the bluster. "Everyone knows you're a curse on aircraft, so you won't be able to get any more front-page blockbusters by falling out of helicopters and planes and God only knows what else. Might as well learn management."

"Can it, White. I manage my department, and that's all I want," she shot back. "You can't take the City out of the girl, so don't try taking the girl out of City."

The rest of the department heads were arriving, including her own husband, and most of them looked amused or exasperated. The ongoing quarrel between the Chief and his heir apparent was no longer news, but it was reliable entertainment.

To most of them, anyway. "Yeah, you manage it with a whip and a chair," someone muttered, and Perry saw Lois' head snap around to fix the offender with the patented Lane Death Glare.

"What was that about Lane and a whip? Whoever said that, keep your daydreams to yourselves. We've got a business to run here. And _we_ own this paper, so we might as well make sure we can pay our own damn salaries."

With that, he sat down and nodded to Keith from Accounting, who always had a dozen graphs and charts and things on hand. After him came Circulation and then Advertising. By the time someone suggested a different scented insert for each holiday, Lois was eyeing her husband across the table with a rubber band in her hand and a devilish gleam in her eye. Bored Lane women made their own fun, but it wasn't always fun for everyone else.

Perry got up, _accidentally_ kicking her chair while she was lining up the shot, and the rubber band snapped back on her own wrist. As she cursed under her breath, he took charge of the meeting, haranguing those who'd slacked off and even giving a little praise to those who'd done well. The way he figured it, they had about another hour of progress reports and general news to wade through before they could all get back to work, and with a little luck Lane might not shoot someone's eye out with a rubber band before they did. He really hoped she hadn't seen that TV show where the two guys proved it was possible to build a crossbow out of paper, a pencil, and some string. And if she had, he hoped she didn't have any string.

Lois merely scowled at him as the head of Features talked about changes she wanted to make, but then Lois' phone chirped. She quickly took it out, several people staring at her, and then her face lit up with a huge smile. "Excuse me. Sorry, Chief, I've got to go. Gotta pick my kid up from school."

"I thought your kids were in college," one of the guys from Accounting said tersely.

"The older two are, the youngest is eleven," Lois said with a sweet smile that promised revenge.

Accounting wasn't as familiar with Lois as other departments, and he didn't take the warning. "Wait, you and Kent had another kid?"

"She's talking about my grand-niece," Perry said gruffly. "My nephew Richard's daughter."

"Yeah, my youngest," Lois said blithely, ignoring the startled way the accountant looked at Clark. Clark just gave a tiny smile and shook his head at the smirk she cast at him.

Perry just sighed and waved her out. Lane-Kent and White family dynamics weren't exactly common knowledge outside of City and International, and knowing Lois, she was enjoying causing a stir as much as she enjoyed escaping the meeting. To get things back on track, Perry snapped out, "Well? It's not like Lane doesn't have someone to take notes for her. You were saying, Kelly?"

…

When Sebast pictured a California bassist, he tended to think surfer boy. Golden tan, longish blonde hair, dreamy eyes. And maybe, if San Francisco lived up to its reputation, at least bi. The extra 'b' in Robb, that seemed to hint at an artistic, iconoclastic personality. A guy could dream, right?

Of course, they were talking about someone who was interested in signing up with a Goth band. California Goths were a little different, a little breezier and less angsty than their East Coast counterparts, more stylish in some ways. Maybe this Robb was someone tall and graceful and just a little otherworldly, one of those fey boys who looked like they'd just stepped out of a Goth remake of _Lord of the Rings_.

But when they got back to the hotel, the guy standing with Morgan was none of those. Sebast had been expecting the typical California body-obsession to give their new bassist the kind of body you could only get from hours at the gym, but this guy was a little on the husky side instead. He looked more like emo than Goth, too, with the chunk of his dark hair that fell over his eyes dyed bright green. Then again, his clothes had enough leather, buckles, and chains to fit in with any of the above, though the frayed jeans and motorcycle boots made Sebast think punk. He also had a safety pin through his right ear lobe, which added to the punk impression.

To Sebast, it all sort of said 'wannabe', like the guy didn't have his own sense of style and just borrowed from the crowd he happened to be running with. And this tour had bands from several genres in the alt spectrum. Sebast wasn't sure _what_ to make of him; adding new people to a band was like some weird kind of marriage. It didn't matter how talented they were if you couldn't stand living in a tour bus with them for half the year.

Kala, of course, stepped forward and held out her hand, smiling that winning smile of hers. "Hi, I'm Kala," she said.

"Hi," Robb said, and there was a hint of shyness in his pleased smile. He took her hand and shook it, and Sebast had to stop himself from rolling his eyes. He'd seen that look on many guys' faces when Kala turned her full-charisma-wattage grin on them. Another one who fell in love at first sight.

Kala saw it too, because she decided to shut it down right away. Directing him to each of the boys accompanying her, she said, "This is Sebast, my co-singer and my best friend. And this is Dustin, my boyfriend."

To his credit, Dustin didn't bat an eyelash. Sebast hadn't intended to summon him for a rebound hookup; first and foremost, he was a good friend, and Kala needed as many of those as she could get right now. But then, Sebast figured Dustin wouldn't mind getting promoted to boyfriend within an hour of landing in California. He and Kala had never really fallen out of love, anyway, and if she had to have a boyfriend, at least Sebast approved of Dustin.

Dustin just shook Robb's hand with a friendly smile and a polite, "Nice to meet you." The bassist smiled back, and Sebast had him pegged. Lonely, talented, shy, this Robb wanted very badly to part of a crowd, _any_ crowd, cooler than he was. Luckily nobody in the band was a status-seeking snob, so as long as he could play the bass as well as Morgan said he could, he'd fit right in with no trouble.

By the time they got the instruments set up for a jam session, Dustin was talking with Robb and Morgan and Ned like he'd known them for years. "I met Kala when she was six," he was telling Robb. "First time I saw her, she was running from her brother—he's my best friend, now—who was chasing her around with a giant bullfrog he'd found somewhere. Muddy ankles and bossy attitude, that's what I remember."

Kala was scandalized. "Dustin! Don't go telling little-kid stories to my band! That's what I have Mom for."

"Nah, Mom's for bringing out the baby pictures," Dustin teased, and Kala glared at him.

"Okay, children, let's make some music," Sebast said. "Robb, got a favorite song we all know?"

The new guy thought for a minute, and then said, "How 'bout _Strange Love_?"

"Classic. I like it," Kala said with a smile, and Morgan strummed a quick scale on his guitar.

An hour later, they'd playing through _Strange Love_ twice, a couple others by Depeche Mode, _Beautiful_ by Joydrop, _Head Like a Hole_ by Nine Inch Nails, and _Love Will Tear Us Apart_ by Joy Division. Sebast nodded to Kala, excited but cautious. So far it was very promising, but now it was time for the acid test. "All right, how about one of ours?" he said. "Morgan, give him the bass line for _Like Her_."

Sebast and Kala both held their breath. Robb wouldn't have had a chance to practice unless he was really zealous about being prepared, and even then he couldn't have known which song they might pick. He fumbled a bit, but caught onto it quickly, and he sounded damn good with Morgan's guitar and Ned's drums.

Kala looked at him and smiled. This spare and haunting song was one of the first they'd written, and she couldn't help singing the first lines softly. Sebast took his cue, letting his voice rise to wrap around hers. The refrain relied on split-second timing, and in the final verse they sang counterpoint to each other, which was always a challenge. Their voices wove in and out of the instrumental accompaniment, and when the song ended Robb added a couple of grace notes that faded away softly.

Absolute silence, and all of them knew Robb was hired. He was good, really seriously good. And then Dustin said quietly, "Damn, I've got goosebumps now."

They'd almost forgotten him, wrapped up in the music, and Kala laughed and hugged him. Sebast offered Robb his hand again. "You're hired, _mijo_. Welcome to the band."

…

Lois pulled up to Kristin's school exactly on time, and said into the empty car, "Yes, worrywart, you can breathe. I made it without breaking any laws. Well, any important ones."

"You will _not_ speed with my daughter in the car, Lois," Lana scolded, her voice perfectly clear through the speakerphone.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm terrified," Lois said dismissively. "Hey, I hear Jane Lutter still flinches at the mention of your name."

"She shouldn't have called you what she called you in my hearing," Lana replied primly. "I don't regret slapping her in the slightest."

The reporter smiled. "And that's why I let you marry my ex."

Her clear laugher hadn't changed in thirteen years. "Your sense of humor is why _I_ let _you_ marry one of my oldest and best friends, Lois."

"Yeah, right. Nothing could've stopped that marriage. Not even a volcano." Lois had only found out about Clark being late to his own wedding when Lana let it slip at Martha's wake. Lois grinned to remember the story, picturing Martha hiding the ring bearer's pillow and then Lana unplugging the speakers, all so she wouldn't know her groom was delayed. Only those two from Smallville would go to so much trouble to spare her a little anxiety.

Although, on her wedding day, it had been much more than a _little_ anxiety. Lois Lane had never really wanted to be married, and she'd sidled out of the room when her sister Lucy tossed the bouquet at her own wedding. The thought of saying 'I do' and meaning it, even with the literal man of her dreams, was shattering. Although in spite of some of the things they'd faced together, and the price she'd paid for choices made in haste and fear, it had been the best decision of her life to marry him.

Lana chuckled. "You're grinning. I can _hear_ you grinning, Lois. It's adorable."

"He's the only one allowed to call me adorable," Lois shot back.

"It's true. Every time you think back on marrying him, you smile like a teenage girl reading _Romeo and Juliet_ for the first time. Have I told you recently how glad I am that you two _finally_ got everything together and that you're still so madly in love with each other?"

Dodging the question, Lois huffed. "_Romeo and Juliet_ is about two stupid teenagers, it takes place over something like three days, and everybody dies at the end. It sucks. No wonder everyone has relationship issues these days, if that's our standard of romance."

"That doesn't change the fact that you and Clark are completely ridiculous about each other. Or that it's _adorable_."

"Now you're just being a pest, cheerleader. Don't you have some last-minute meeting to be at? If you've got time to harass me, you could pick up your own kid." The snark in Lois' voice was only for show, and both women knew it.

"I'm on my way in right now. Give Little K my love, Lo, and thank you for picking her up. Oh, and thank your daughter for the hair."

Lois broke the connection as kids began to stream from the school, wondering what she'd meant by that. Kristin had stayed an extra day in Smallville with her mother, and Kala had been there too. So what…?

"Hey, Lo-Lo!"

And then she saw the Kristin hurriedly making her way to the car, catching glimpses of her through the crowd. "Oh my God," Lois groaned. "She's lucky Red hasn't killed her."

Kristin's long, beautiful auburn hair—the exact same glorious shade Lana had cherished in her youth—now had bright purple streaks at the temples exactly like Kala's. Running into her arms, the munchkin hugged her tight and Lois returned it in equal measure. When the little redhead pulled back, she noticed her Lo's crooked smile and where that hazel gaze was directed. Glancing at the strand just to her right, Kristin flashed the older woman a grin and chirped, "Big K did it. Isn't it _cool_?"

All Lois could do was laugh.

…

Jason woke slowly, snuggled up warm and comfortable with Elise in his arms. He sighed happily; the previous night's memories were fuzzy, but she was here in bed with him, and that meant all was right and well with the world. Jason slid his arm around her waist and tugged her closer, nuzzling her shoulder. She shifted backwards against him, fitting herself against his body like two spoons in a drawer, and made a sleepy murmur of contentment.

This was the best way to wake up, no urgency. Somehow he knew it wasn't a lab day and he could drowse until noon. Jason had time to appreciate Elise's warmth, the curve of her waist under his arm, the silken feel of her skin. He stretched a little and nuzzled into her hair, letting the pale blonde waves tickle his nose—

Wait.

Jason opened his eyes a little more, blinking in confusion. Something wasn't right. Elise was a brunette … but that was _definitely_ blonde hair right in front of him.

He sat up abruptly, and _Cassie Sandsmark_ rolled over to look up at him in bemusement. Any sleepiness was blasted out of him by the sheer shock, eyes huge. "Oh, _shit!_" Jason yelped.

And then realized that by sitting up, he'd knocked the covers down, and he was completely buck-naked. In trying to grab the comforter, he lost his balance and fell off the edge of the bed, landing on his butt on the floor.

Cassie sat up, shoved her hair out of her eyes, and laughed at him as he tried to claw the comforter over his lap and _not_ look at her. "Gotta say, that's the first time I've gotten _that_ reaction," she teased.

"Oh my God. _Okay_. Yeah. Cassie, I'm - " He held up both hands in the _don't-shoot-me_ gesture. "_Okay_, wait, I need coffee before I can think, but I need pants before I can make coffee. Also, I may be completely lame, but I need you to have a shirt on, at least. Preferably underwear, too. Please." That won fresh laughter, and he craned his head around, muttering as he felt his cheeks burning, "Pants, pants, where the heck are my pants?"

"By the door, I think. Calm down, Jase," Cassie chuckled, finding her shirt beside the bed and tugging it on. Jason awkwardly headed to the door and hurriedly hopped into his pants, change falling out of the pockets.

Memories were coming back now, of Elise leaving after the funeral, telling him she was still his friend but _just_ his friend, for now anyway. Being bummed out, but trying to pick his life back up while still grieving Martha. Cassie poking at him constantly, telling him he needed to get out and _do_ something, stop laying around like an oversized alien sloth, then going with her on a mission that landed them in Toronto since Gotham was still on lockdown. Nabbing a gang of art thieves red-handed, stopping for dinner at the first likely place afterward, and discovering they were both legal to drink in Ontario. A drink or two had sounded like a good idea, it wasn't as if they'd be driving, and he had a lot of things he'd like to let go.

Canadian beer, Cassie's sunny smile, the way she always understood him. Making jokes about a goddess and an alien walking into a bar. Leaving, the night air crisp, feeling a little light-headed—Kryptonian metabolism notwithstanding, Jason wasn't used to alcohol. Making their way back to Titans Tower, by leaps and bounds for Jason, by flight for Cassie, and she'd done a long series of slow loops so as not to get too far ahead of him.

Walking her to her room, talking in the doorway. Jason wasn't sure if he'd kissed her first, or if she'd kissed him, but it had been very nice indeed. Everyone kept telling him to date other girls, and this was kind of a date, right? Crime-fighting, dinner, drinks, and a kiss at the end.

Only the kiss hadn't been the end. Jason blushed as he handed Cassie her coffee and sat down again on the edge of the bed. He was wincing slightly, feeling like the worst kind of cretin as he ran a hand through his hair. "Umm….So…"

She bit her lip, clearly trying not to laugh out loud again. "You are seriously adorable, you know that, Super-dork? You look like a cross between an apologetic spaniel and a teddy bear."

"Well, I didn't really mean to do this, especially with the way everything else has been crazy," he said miserably, not really being able to look her in the eye. How could he have done something this completely moronic? His father would be unutterably proud of this little incident, he was sure. He sighed then and continued, his expression earnest as he made himself look her in the eye. She deserved that acknowledgement. It had been his mistake, not hers. "And I never meant to hurt you, either. I mean, Cassie, we're such good friends and I don't want to ruin that. And I might have done that because I was drunk and stupid." He frowned then, shaking his head and looking sheepish. "So now … I have no idea what to say."

She sighed and propped her chin in her hand, looking at him. Her smile was affectionate when she reached out to rap him lightly on the nose. "Do you have to be the ultimate good guy? Oh Jason, this is gonna come as a shock, but we both know that most of our crew doesn't consider something like this to be a marriage proposal or something. It happens. It's okay. I didn't mean to do this either, you know. But if it was anyone, I'm glad it was you. We were a lot more smashed than we thought, huh?" She gave him an amused little smile.

"Yeah, but … I also feel like an enormous jerk for freaking out. I was just surprised. I don't remember a lot of last night, to be honest. And I'm not the kind of guy… I mean, I don't normally do things like this. I mean, Cassie…" He trailed off then, dropping his forehead into his palm for a moment. Of all the situations he would have expected to find himself in, this hadn't been one of them. Dad might be disappointed, but Mom would have been having a field day with this. After a moment, he glanced back at Cassie. "I'm totally screwing this up, aren't I?" He was still blushing, and he ran his hand through his already-rumpled hair again.

Cassie raised an eyebrow at him, finally laughing a little. "Stop, you. I'm not mad at you at all. _At all_, okay? Honestly, I expect nothing less than an awkward morning-after from you, Super-monogamous, regardless of how awesome the night before was. And I kind of appreciate it, you know. Lots of guys would be running up and down the hallway in their boxers yelling, 'I scored a demi-goddess!' You, you're all worried about my feelings. It's what makes you _you_, Jason, and that's part of why you're one of my best friends. That's not going to change, you dork."

"Thanks, I think," he replied, still bashful. "Besides, you're not a _score_. You're my friend, and a pretty awesome person."

Bracing her hand on the bed between them, she leaned over and kissed the tip of his nose briefly. "Don't _worry_ so much. Zero drama. I'm on the pill, and we used a condom. Both times, if I remember correctly. It didn't suck, and who knows? Maybe there was a reason for it. Besides, what's one night between besties, right? No regrets here, SB, none at all. I mean, it could have been worse, you know. You could have been out with one of the others. Right?"

That last quip finally made Jason laugh, her grin infectious. "I guess you're right."

"I'm always right. Unless, of course, you'd like to take me out on a real date and see where this goes. I'd be up for that." She shrugged and sipped her coffee, arching an eyebrow.

Everything that had happened so far this morning had through him for a loop, but he found himself smiling back at her. She had a point and one that he decided to let himself seriously consider. "I, um … You know what, I'd like that."

Cassie's grin was almost brighter than the sunlight pouring into her room. "Well, all right then." With a chuckle, she clinked mugs with him. "Awesome."

Elise was still The One so far as Jason was concerned, but taking Cassie out for dinner and movie would be nice. If his grandmother's passing had taught him one thing, it was that one needed to live their lives as they came, not wait around for it to find you. And he and Cassie understood each other and she was one of his closest friends. It didn't have to be the end-all and be-all of dramatic late-teens love, he finally realized. The world hadn't ended because he slept with Cassie once. Maybe, just maybe, everyone was right and he really _should_ at least date another girl. And if he was going to date, he was starting to realize there was no one right now he'd rather spend time with than Cassie.


	8. Sliding Through the Turns

Finally, Kal-El was on his way home. He appreciated the fact that he'd been able to stay in Smallville an extra week, tidying up loose ends. But the downside of that was Lois having to go home first and keep the newspaper under control, both her department and his. He would've liked to have her by his side every waking moment while he tried to deal with the aftermath of Ma's passing. It just wasn't possible, given their work situation.

She'd been there for him while she was in Smallville, held him that first night, and she'd woken early enough the next morning to soothe him while he wept from the worst nightmare he'd ever had. He'd dreamed that the previous night had all been a dream, that Ma was alive and laughing at him for mourning her. And of course, then he'd woken up to find her truly gone.

Lois had been his rock then, the steady shoulder he could lean on. Few people understood just how much he relied on her, just how much of his strength was really hers. Lois had a poster hanging in her home office that read, 'Behind every good man is a great woman,' except he'd long ago covered the 'good' part with a sticky note that read 'super' and the 'great' part with a series of stacked notes that had things like 'fantastic', 'brilliant', and 'fierce' written on them. She teased him about it, but they both knew the sentiment was genuine. It was never easy to be a hero, but it was certainly easi_er_ if you could lift an island and let bullets bounce off your chest. Being heroic without powers was the _real_ challenge, and that was his wife. She was his hero, he was hers, and they both knew just how lucky they were to have their happily-ever-after.

At least they were secure enough to handle a few days apart. Keeping in touch by phone helped—he'd called her every night for a long chat, and texted every day. Of course he could've flown home at any time, but Kal-El wanted to spend some extra time with Ben. And now that the older man knew the truth, he also knew his stepson was only a phone call away. If he ever needed a hand, Kal-El could be there in minutes.

Still, he was glad to be home. It was early in the afternoon when he touched down on the balcony, expecting Lois to be home. He'd texted her an hour ago just so she wouldn't be surprised when she got in … but it turned out he was the one surprised. There was a note stuck in the French doors leading into the living room that simply said, 'Find me'.

He located her heartbeat easily enough, and found his gorgeous wife submerged up to her chin in a steaming hot bath redolent of lavender and vanilla. "C'mere, hero, I've been keeping the water warm for you," she said with a grin.

"I'll just bet you have," he laughed. Kal-El got undressed without hesitation and climbed in with her, glad they'd installed the garden tub back when they got this place. Most regular bathtubs were too short for his long-legged frame, and Lois liked to soak in a generous amount of water. Having massaging jets in the side made the whole thing a ridiculous indulgence, but a welcome one.

This was _just_ what he needed, the heat soothing the last of the tension from him, Lois' arms around him as he lay back against her. She kissed his temple and inhaled, breathing the scent of him. "I love you."

"I love you, too." No other words needed to be said. Later they'd talk, about losing their moms, about plans that had to be made for the future, about Ma and what an amazing woman she was. But for right now all the comfort he needed was in her arms around his chest, her knees under his hands, her breath ruffling his hair, and her heartbeat strong and steady against his back.

…

Richard's office chair squeaked. Normally that would aggravate him, but right now he was having too much fun irritating the guy in the next office. He'd rock back and rotate the chair so that it squeaked every few seconds, _squeak-squeak-squeak_, then stop, count to an odd number like seven or fifteen, and then do it again. The irregular intervals were driving the stuffed-shirt next door _nuts_. Maybe he had enough clout with management—which Richard referred to as manglement, given the state of this office—to get a new chair ordered. _Squeak-squeak-squeak … squeaka-squeak._

"Are you actually doing anything _productive_, White?" That was the office busybody, a guy named Jerry. Richard had mistakenly assumed that anyone working for a flight magazine would be fairly cool, but this guy was apparently afraid of heights, hated airplanes, and thought all pilots were insane. Well, Richard would be the first to admit he wasn't the best example of a _sane_ pilot.

"I'm having an idea," he replied calmly. "I'm thinking I should go home early. And then tomorrow morning I'll head down to Schreyeck Airfield and drink a couple cups of coffee with whoever's in. Maybe pick up the latest gossip, see what restored classics people are flying. I could've sworn I saw an old Bellanca out there last week. Looked pre-war."

Jerry sneered. "And that counts as productive."

Richard shrugged. "I meet all my deadlines."

"You'll never get ahead in this business by just meeting expectations," was the snide reply.

To that, Richard could only laugh. "C'mere. See this photo on my desk?" He turned around one of the framed photos on his desk. This one happened to show himself, Lana, and Kristin, taken on the deck of the cabin in North Carolina. "The gorgeous redhead here is my lovely wife, Lana. She happens to be the L in L. Lang. So given that you can't walk into any mall in this country and not fall over her stuff, and L. Lang is a privately held company, just how much do you think I need to get ahead around here?"

"Oh, charming," Jerry replied flatly.

"Furthermore…." Richard found another photo and turned it around for him. "See this crew? Editor in chief of the _Daily Planet,_ Perry White—my uncle—his successor, Lois Lane—my ex-fiancée—and her husband, Clark Kent, head of the International department at the _Planet_, which job I convinced him to take when I left it. So yeah, when I decide to get ahead in this life, I'll just head right back home to the biggest newspaper in town. I'm sure one of them'll give me a desk. Knowing Lois, it'll be in Features because she's a vindictive bitch, but that's just her good side."

He leaned back, squeaking the chair, and then grinned evilly. "Or I'll just head over to the _Daily Star_ and get hired there. I know the editor in chief for that paper, too. It'd serve Lo right if I decided to give her some real competition."

"So you married money and you're well-connected. Why are you _here_, White?"

Richard shrugged. "I love planes. I love journalism. It's kind of a dream job. Lemme tell you a secret: getting ahead is no fun if you're just doing it because you think you're supposed to. Getting to where you're comfortable and happy and can pursue your dreams, _that's_ fun. I don't need the stress or the heartache of the whole rat race thing. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to skip out of work, go pick up my daughter and my wife, and take our dogs running in the park."

He promptly did exactly that. When he got to Lana's office, Kay met him just outside. "She's on a conference call with the Vancouver team. Give it a minute. And hey there, little K. Love the hair."

"It's so awesome! Kala dyed it for me." Kristin preened, showing off her purple streaks. Richard thought it was pretty cool-looking, but Lana had hit the roof after realizing the color was permanent. Future hair experiments were going to have to involve clip-ins or wash-out dyes, at least until Kristin got a little older.

They chatted for a few minutes, catching up on the office with Richard sharing his conversation with Jerry, and Kay updating him on herself, Laurel, and the joys of working with people in six time zones on two continents. Finally Lana strolled out to meet them.

Every single time they saw each other after an absence of more than ten minutes, Richard grinned to look at her, and Lana smiled warmly at him. It made their friends yell for insulin after a while, but to him, that was the secret of lasting love. Marry someone who made your heart lift every time you saw them. "Hey babe," he said, and kissed her.

"Not a babe anymore, with this much white in my hair," she laughed.

"That's just your hair trying to match your name—or we can blame it on putting up with Lois and Clark and the twins," Richard replied with a shrug.

Kristin pouted up at Kay. "How come parents always hafta kiss?"

"It's a parent thing. They like embarrassing their kids in public," Kay told her.

Lana ruffled her daughter's hair. "You're out early, Richard."

He smirked mischievously. "Yeah, well, they tried to hold me back, but I was like a wild animal, so eventually they just set me free."

"More like he snuck out when no one was looking," Kay added drolly.

"Hey, who's telling this story?" he complained, getting laughs from all three.

Lana managed to leave for the day; sometimes he had to cajole her into walking away from her work, but this wasn't one of those days. They took Kristin and both dogs to the park, holding hands as they walked. Cissa heeled beautifully with the end of her leash tucked into Lana's back pocket, and Kristin carried Dusty's leash.

"You're not the only one who left work early today," Lana said, as their daughter encouraged the beagle to chase pigeons.

"Oh yeah? What's the gossip?" Richard asked.

"Lois took an early afternoon. Clark's home from Smallville."

That news, and the reminder that came with it, didn't darken Richard's day. Instead he held Lana's hand a little tighter, grateful for all the sweetness in his life. "I love you. You know that, right?"

"I love you, too." She squeezed his hand right back with a soft smile.

…

Providing their own transportation for a nationwide multi-band tour _sucked_. Especially when said transportation consisted of a full-sized van Kala had bought used, and now Ned's and Robb's cars. Ned drove a restored hearse with the back fitted out almost like a camper, and Robb had an elderly Corolla that had just died horribly on the side of the freeway. Fortunately they weren't seeing much traffic.

Tossing a frustrated glare at Robb, Kala covered her face with her hands and sighed. "Dustin, I swear Sebast didn't invite you along as our personal mechanic."

"I know, but since I'm here…." He was elbow-deep in the engine, shaded by the hood of Robb's car. The rest of the caravan had pulled over in sympathy, and Kala figured that her band—all in various Goth and punk gear even at eleven in the morning—were causing quite the spectacle for the few cars that passed them.

Robb was practically wringing his hands. "I, um, don't really have that much money right now," he said apologetically. "It's not gonna be expensive, is it?"

"Nope," Dustin said cheerfully. "I think it's just your serpentine belt. Twenty bucks or so, and I can put it on for you if we can get a ratchet and a 3/8th socket. Has it been squealing when you start it up first thing in the morning?"

"Well, yeah, but it always goes away in like a block. Or two."

Dustin slid out from under the car and brushed his hands off. "That's a sign you've got a belt wearing out, Robb. As they warm up the squealing goes away, but eventually it'll break or slip out of place, and then you have a problem. I _think_ you're okay here, because it just snapped clean and you pulled over right away."

"I guess I'm glad I didn't try driving to the next exit," Robb said sheepishly.

Kala chuckled. "Robb, the serpentine runs your A/C, your alternator, your oil pump, and your water pump. You _really_ don't wanna drive without the last two."

"Yeah, that'd blow the engine as soon as it got hot," Dustin added. "So good decision. Now, how're we gonna tow it? I left my truck in Kansas."

Holding up her purse, Kala grinned. "Triple-A, baby. Doesn't matter whose car it is, I can get it towed." After some discussion and a call to AAA, Robb left in the van with Sebast and Morgan, Ned drove off behind them, and Kala and Dustin waited with the car keys. They would all meet up at the next tour destination.

"So, whatcha think of my wild crew?" Kala asked, once the dust settled.

"Robb needs a new car," Dustin said thoughtfully.

Kala tipped back her head and laughed. Trust Dustin not to comment on Ned's electric blue topknot, the safety pin Robb wore as an earring, or Morgan's new wingtips. He had cars on the brain. "Is it as bad as that Oldsmobile Jase and I had?" she teased.

"Nah, that was a solid car. Once we got everything fixed with it I bet it'd run for another twenty years. This thing, someone didn't take care of it. It's got about three slow leaks I can see, and the engine's filthy. He'd better get rid of it before it up and dies on him for good." Dustin kicked a tire lightly. "Needs new tires, too. Looks like he's got retreads on it."

"The life of a traveling musician. They tell you all about the romance of the road, they never tell you how much the mileage is gonna beat up your car," Kala said ruefully.

"Your van looks good though," Dustin offered.

"I baby it. It gets its oil changes right at 3,000 miles, I check the fluids and the tire pressure every time we head out, and I put new spark plugs and wires on it a month ago," Kala said absently.

Dustin laughed and looped his arm around her shoulders, bringing her in for a kiss. "And that's why I love you so much. Because you spend more time on makeup than I do shaving _and_ getting dressed, but you know how to change your spark plugs."

"Well, yeah. I'm not paying some asshole at the quik-lube place ninety bucks for a tune-up just because he thinks girls don't know jack about cars." Kala ran that sentence back through her mind and winced. "Sorry."

Dustin shrugged. "I know you cuss. I can kinda guess where you get it from, too. I actually rode in a car with your mom once, you know."

"Most people only ride with her once," Kala chuckled, and leaned her head on his shoulder. After a moment, she went quiet and thoughtful. Then she asked softly, "So are we really making a go of this again? Take a second shot?"

Dustin kissed her hair. "Well, yeah. I never fell out of love with you. There've been other girls, but … you're kind of a tough act to follow."

"Same here, it turns out," she sighed, frowning and leaning into him. "Alan … huge mistake. Colossal. I know what I was thinking when we started up, but yeah. Dumb. And I can't really remember too many of the ones between you and him, as horrified as I am to admit it. Other than you and Nick, I've pretty much sucked at relationships." Kala pulled away slightly with watchful eyes, "If we're going to try this again, I really, really want to try to make it work, Dustin. Maybe this time it might be something we can work out. Not in big cities all the time, you know."

"So do I. And hey, maybe you _should_ have a traveling mechanic on the team, if you're gonna hire people who drive heaps like this."

"Someday we'll be riding around in a custom tour bus instead of our own cars," Kala said dreamily.

He shrugged. "Won't surprise me. You're _good_, Kala. Really good."

Oh, the smile he got for that. It lit her up even more than the sunlight. "I had no idea you liked my music," she chuckled. "It's not like you or Lizardboy ever listened to it other than to mock me when we were growing up. I seem to remember someone mentioning cats and blenders when all of this first started."

"Yeah, well, I've always told you it's not really my style, but I can tell what you're doing now is good. And that was before you got training and were just singing loud to sing loud. Now you're actually _singing_. Doesn't sound anything like when you were playing around. You've got a voice with all kinds of power and emotion and stuff." Dustin paused, breathing in the candied-violet scent of her hair, and added, "The rest of the band is pretty good, too. Needs more cowbell though."

She elbowed him, smirking. "Yeah, right. I think cowbell might be a detour on my road to fame and fortune."

He grinned back at her then. "I don't think anything could detour you, Kala. Of course, by then you won't need your own mechanic."

She looked up at him, her heavily-lined hazel eyes solemn in the morning light. "I have this feeling like I'm always gonna need you in my life, Dustin. One way or another."

That got her a broad smile and a kiss on the lips. "Who knows, maybe I'll find a little gypsy in my blood, and we can live happily ever after on the road. If you get six or eight months of the year touring every big city on the continent, you think you could survive Smallville the rest of the time? Or at least someplace like North Carolina, where you don't have 24/7 traffic noise outside your window?"

"Maybe," she said thoughtfully. "Could be a lot of fun finding out, huh?" If they were both making it a go, it could work, after all. Maybe if she was lucky the second time around with Dustin, now that they were both a little older and surer of themselves, would be the charm.

In any case, it was worth it to see the look on the tow truck driver's face when he pulled up. Only then did Kala realize how mismatched they looked: Dustin in jeans, a polo shirt, work boots, and that godforsaken cowboy hat, next to her in her velvet skirt, lace stockings, knee-high boots, and frilly peasant blouse, all in black and topped by her typical day makeup, which included more eyeliner than most people wore clubbing.

"You need some help?" the driver asked dubiously.

"Don't mind her, she doesn't bite," Dustin said with a grin. "Well, not much. You're okay as long as you're not O-positive."

She swatted his shoulder and laughed; it was the laugh that made the truck driver grin. Kala had never had a proper Goth laugh. She tended to tip her head back for a rollicking, infectious laugh that made everyone smile.

Ten minutes later Robb's Corolla was riding on the flatbed of the tow truck, and Kala and Dustin were sitting in the cab swapping worst-driver stories with the driver. "I have the best!" Kala proclaimed, and told them about the idiot her mom had cursed out for putting _pantyhose_ on in Metropolis traffic.

…

Lois paid for her early Thursday by going into the office Saturday morning. She put the weekend editions together, terrorized the International department in her husband's absence, and then headed home. The dining schedule had gotten switched around over the years; Saturday night used to be dinner out for her and Kal-El, but it was now the most convenient time for either twin to visit, so Sunday had become date night and Saturday was the as-often-as-possible family dinner.

Her phone rang as soon as she got back, with the ringtone Kala had set last time she was home: the Godzilla roar from the Japanese films. "Hello, Jason," Lois answered, wondering what she should change it to. The last thing she needed was for her purse to start roaring during a board meeting at work. Her left brow raising a little, she smirked at the thought. Then again, it'd liven things up a little.

"Hi, Mom," he said, and as always, Lois grinned at the sound of her son's voice. She never would have suspected when she was younger just how much she would miss the sound of her kids' voices, most especially when they were teenagers. _Most_ especially. "So, I was wondering if I could bring a friend to dinner."

"Sure," the answer was automatic. Now that was a new one, too. Both twins had been bringing friends home over the years, undeterred by their family legacy in the least. They obviously got that from her. "Who's coming down from college with you?"

"Oh, um, it's not a college friend. This is an … extracurricular friend. From the club." Jason sounded bashful; they hadn't quite worked out code for bringing home friends from the Titans. It wouldn't be a good idea to use their real names or their code names on an unencrypted line, either.

"Oh, okay. That's fine. Hope they can live with Italian. Your dad's making lasagna." Lois couldn't ask over the phone when Bruce had lifted the curfew on Gotham; it was probably Tim coming over to get some breathing room from that whole situation. No one was keeping Lois informed, probably because once they'd told her Tim had been attacked and had to be hospitalized, she was perfectly ready to put a couple bullets in the Red Hood. Oh, she wouldn't kill him, knowing who he was, but he could work out all his goddamn daddy issues from a hospital bed instead of running around killing off Gotham's gangsters.

The last she'd heard, Bruce still hadn't pulled his head out of his ass and was trying to keep everyone else—even Kal-El and Diana—out of _his_ city. She shook her head; the Bat didn't want _her_ going over there to read him the riot act. Lois liked Bruce, respected him, but if she was willing to tell _Superman_ off then setting the Bat straight was no big thing. Especially over those boys. There were days….

Taking everything into consideration, she decided to bake a pie for dessert, not that she had any levels of domesticity to prove or any chance of competing with Alfred, but just because. Tim was known to have a little bit of a sweet tooth, especially when you got him and Jason together, and she knew a way to maybe make the visit a little more special. Lucy had put in a vegetable garden at the Riverside house, and she'd sent over some fresh rhubarb and some homemade strawberry jam. Lois figured between the two she could whip up a strawberry-rhubarb pie, another one of the Kansas recipes in her deck and one of Kal-El's favorites. Not something he was likely to get at home.

By the time the doorbell rang, Lois was prepared to delicately interview a traumatized Tim Drake and figure out exactly where things in Gotham stood. God knew that everything had to be off-kilter with the family dynamics warped all to hell. But when she opened the apartment door, she found herself facing Wonder Girl instead.

Lois blinked, and Cassie Sandsmark smiled rather nervously. Jason, of course, stepped in without hesitation and hugged his mom. Laughing as she always did when he picked her entirely, she didn't fight it and simply hugged him back. He'd first done it by accident when he was about fourteen, startling them both, and had been doing it ever since. By the time he put her down, she'd recovered her equilibrium. She knew perfectly well that the junior Trinity hung out together, and with Tim locked up in Gotham, of course these two would be hanging out. And of course her son would bring another metahuman appetite to freeload on their food. At least Kala wasn't there this week, or they'd have had to double the lasagna.

Poor girl looked a little off-kilter and kept glancing at her son, who was acting like nothing was up. Lois got the feeling that maybe this had to do with having had a death in the family and maybe that was why she was unsure. Looked like she was going to have to jump in here and even things out. "Hi, Cassie," Lois said, taking her hand and bringing her in with a smile. "Nice to see you. I hope you like lasagna; Clark's really proud of his recipe."

"Dad's lasagna is the awesome," Jason cut in.

"Even if I didn't like lasagna, I'd be happy. Who else gets Superman to cook for them?" Cassie said with a little laugh. _Intimidated. That's what this is. Poor kid. I get this feeling this is why they've stuck to civilians. It's easier to play off famous reporter parents than someone knowing who your dad is. No wonder she's freaked; it's not like the older ones that see him all the time. The second generation is still in total awe._

Lois smirked. "Who gets Superman to cook for them? Me. Every chance I get, especially on my night to cook. But don't get it into your head that he's perfect. Clark's capable of burning a pot roast or two."

Jason rolled his eyes. "_Mom_. He got called away, that wasn't his fault."

"Doesn't matter, it still counts."

Kal-El himself wasn't in at the moment; he'd put the lasagna together and started baking it, but had heard an extreme amount of shots fired and sirens heading up to Magnus Labs about fifteen minutes ago. With his luck, it would be another ten or so before he made it back in. In the meantime, Lois was listening for the oven timer and trying to figure out exactly what seemed hinky about this situation. Couldn't just be feeling overwhelmed. Something else was up here.

Jason elbowed Cassie lightly. "Hey, relax. It's just my parents. You don't even have to deal with Elvira. They're just really goofy most of the time. Not like we're having dinner with _your_ dad."

"Oh yeah, 'cause I have all kinda quality time with the high god of the Greek pantheon," Cassie muttered. Lois smiled slightly to herself, snagging chips and dip to occupy the two teens so they didn't start eyeing her fridge and the pie. What a world she lived in, that there was a demigoddess sitting on her couch snarking at her son.

Not that that impressed her or anything. She was, after all, Lois Lane. With all that she had seen over the years, that was pretty much a normal state of affairs. And from what she could tell, Cassie was a fairly normal girl in spite of all the weird shit in her life. Had to be a hell of a thing to deal with, too, only finding out that you're part of that kind of lineage in the midst of teenage storms. What a time to drop that kind of bomb on a kid.

Much the same thing could be said for her sister-in-arms Donna, although she had known what her deal was from the start. However, immortal witch hell-bent on driving you crazy? Diana's kid sister had a lot more bad shit happening to her than most, especially that horrible accident the other year. But she had gotten up, with a little help from her best friend, and had made herself keep going. In the last couple of years, she and Diana had finally gotten of all their issues straightened out. Lois had to admit, short of the fact that Diana had thrown in her lot with Bruce for the last little while, the Wonders pretty much had their heads screwed on right.

And then she walked back into the living room and right into a conversation she really hadn't expected to hear. "…and meeting the parents is _so_ not third-date material, Jason," Cassie was saying.

Her sweet boy just looked perplexed, which Lois had to admit, he frequently did when dealing with girls. Oh God, how had she not known? "Huh? This isn't really a date, I mean, it's family dinner night and I brought you along as my friend. If it was a date we'd go to the movies after or something."

Lois set down the chips and dips and then stood up, looking at her son with her arms crossed. "_Date_? Really? This is news to me. Jason, you have something to tell me?"

"Oh my _gods_," Cassie groaned, sinking down in her corner of the sofa. "You didn't tell them?"

"I kinda didn't have a chance without using real names on an open phone line," he replied defensively, then rounded on his mother. "Before you start scolding, Mom, you kept telling me to see other girls. Repeatedly. And Cassie's a really good friend. Also ridiculously gorgeous."

The narrow-eyed look Jason was getting told her that that had been the puzzle piece she had been missing. "You're not saving this," Cassie whispered.

Lois sighed. _Oh, __for the love of…._ "Jason, honey, if she's your girlfriend, this is a date. You know how all of this works. It's not like you never dated before. What was she supposed to think?"

"Yeah, but … I'm losing this argument no matter what, aren't I?" He looked sheepishly up at her.

Taking a seat across from them, Lois smirked. "I know. You dated your sister's friends, but never _your_ friends, and that makes it different. You don't get to switch back to friend-mode unless you break up. God, no wonder Cassie's been a live-wire." Her gaze flicked over to the girl, who gave what looked like a relieved little laugh. "Sorry, Cassie, I swear I taught him better than this. He gets the gormy-around-girls gene from his father."

That at least got a sunny smile from the blonde. "Don't worry, I'll get him trained. And I like the adorable goofiness."

"Good, because it never goes away. Luckily it grows on you over time." Lois smiled at them. As much as it had startled her, she was genuinely happy to see her son actually dating someone he hadn't known from the age of fourteen, and everything she heard about Wonder Girl was positive. Nothing she should be really worried about with this one and it gave Jason a chance to see what being with another hero was like. It was also the end of an era.

If she was honest, she hated not having Elise around. Now that she knew the secret she'd always be part of the family, and for a few years she'd practically been another of Lois' kids. It had been nice to have an ally against the rest of this family of crazies. But the larger situation would work itself out. Elise could still come back into the fold as something else equally important. The kids were still only teenagers. They had plenty of time decide what they wanted with their lives.

She added with a chuckle, "Just be glad your sister's out in California. She'd give you hell."

Jason sighed. "She's gonna give me hell anyway, it's what she does. It's not like she can't hear _anything_ if she wants to. If I know her, she knows already, has known for weeks." This was followed by his eyes raised to the ceiling. However, a though a moment later had one eyebrow up and his blue eyes shining. This was going to be a good one, from the looks of things. "_Oh,_ speaking of which, she broke up with Alan."

Lois couldn't resist a sigh of relief. "Hallelujah," she said, and leaned across to high-five her son. "Your dad'll be thrilled." That one had been bad news from the start, she had known it. Having heard from Kala what the sniveling little creep had said when she had prepared to head out for Martha's funeral, it had only been a matter of time. That was another way Kala took after her: not so good with choosing relationships. She was young and having fun, but had yet to find anything but trouble in all but one of her relationships since high school, not that _anyone_ had been comfortable with Kala's idea of a high-school boyfriend.

"Even better? Guess who's decided to go out there and join her on tour?" Jason said with a grin. "_Dustin_. Cassie, you've heard about Dustin, my best friend from Smallville. So yeah, Kala and Dustin are back together. Keep your fingers crossed that it works out this time."

That made Lois smile. Dustin and Kala were completely adorable. And he was the only one of her boyfriends that every one of the guys in her life—her father, Sebast, and Jason—approved of. It was an odd pairing to just look at, both of them from different worlds. That said, look how things had turned out for her and Kal-El. But she couldn't resist picking on her son a little. "Wait a sec, you're rooting for him now? I remember you picking him up by the coat and shaking him because he kissed her."

Jason scoffed. "_Mom_. That was when we were all sixteen. He wasn't ready to be kissing Kala yet."

Cassie chuckled, snagging a chip. "You're kind of an overprotective brother, aren't you?" she asked.

Lois cut in before Jason could deny it. "The worst kind. Then again, she chased off all his girlfriends except one, and he's loomed over all of her boyfriends."

Jason stuck his tongue out at her. "What she's not telling you is that at sixteen, Kala decided it'd be a good idea to date a college boy. She should have a warning label or something."

Grinning at Cassie, Lois added, "She's _my_ daughter. Someone ought to make a public service announcement."

"I kinda got that," Cassie admitted. "I mean, we don't see her much, but she strikes me as a real firebrand."

"That's my baby," Lois said smugly.

…

At the latest venue, Sebast dropped his bag onto one of the beds and sighed heavily. Having Dustin here was great, and it did his heart good to see Kala happy again, but it messed up his life in all kinds of ways.

Most notably, his living arrangements. He and Kala had shared a bed for years, but right now Dustin was snuggling up to her next door. And Sebast was staring at a double bed that looked way too big for just him.

"Get over it," Morgan advised, flopping onto the other bed. Ned and Robb were in the next room over, and they could hear them sorting out who was going to sleep where and who got the first shower. When Sebast only looked miserable, Morgan sighed at him. "He's her _boyfriend_, Sebast. Of course he's sharing a room with her."

"I know, I just … I got used to having her with me. How am I gonna sleep without her trying to push me off the bed every fifteen minutes?" He dropped onto his own bed and stared up at the generic art print above it, some still life with flowers and fruit that looked like a Stalmaster student could've done it in their sleep. Only in their sleep, come to think of it. Stalmaster kids had more creativity.

"Look, you want me to come over there in the middle of the night and kick you a couple times just so you feel at home?" Morgan asked, trying not to laugh.

Sebast turned to him with his most pathetic, pleading expression. "Could you? I mean, Morgan, she's my best friend. You should really take advantage of me in my moment of weakness."

Morgan sighed and rolled his eyes. "You're a huge perv. Stay over there, Sebast. If I wake up with you cuddling up to me, I'm gonna punch you. Just so you know."

"You're no fun, you homophobe," Sebast grumbled.

"Yeah, whatever. It's not that I have issues with you being gay, I have issues with you trying to climb down my pants." They both laughed a little at that; Sebast's flirting had become more of a running joke than serious solicitation.

Sebast sighed again. All of a sudden he had too many empty hours in his day to go with the empty space in his bed. Maybe he'd let himself get a little too codependent on his bestie. And maybe Morgan was right, and he should just get over it already. It wasn't like she was _gone_ or anything, she was right nearby, and he'd always have her in rehearsal and onstage.

Speaking of stage, they were on it tonight, and he'd better grab an afternoon nap while he could to rest from the long road trip. Thinking that, he let his eyes drift shut.


	9. Those Within Reach and Those Gone Beyond

"Where exactly are we again?" Kala asked. She was driving, Dustin was playing navigator, and Sebast was sprawled across the van's bench seat, snoring gently. Reno had been good to him, Kala assumed.

Dustin unfurled the map. "We just passed Lovelock. The next town is Winnemucca, about an hour away." He glanced over at the speedometer and added, "Fifty minutes, for you."

"Hey, I am my mother's daughter," Kala protested, checking her speed. She was maintaining a steady 79 miles per hour, just four above the limit.

Dustin shrugged. "Long as you don't get caught, and don't blow a gasket."

"I checked everything before we left. And Robb's even keeping up." She checked her rearview mirror again; Robb's Corolla was hanging on gamely a few car lengths behind her, and behind him was Ned's hearse, currently being driven by Morgan while Ned napped in the back. He'd had some fun when they set out from Reno, leaving the curtained windows open and lying perfectly still with his hands folded on his chest. People had stared at the apparent 'corpse' in traffic, until Ned raised a hand and waved. Kala had had to call Morgan and get him to tell Ned to quit before they caused a wreck.

Silence again. The desert flowing past her window seemed to beckon, a great yawning silence full of wind and sand and loneliness. The hairs on the back of Kala's neck stood up every time she looked out. This was a little too familiar; around a hundred miles south of here was Luthor's underground lab, and the awareness of it made her anxious.

They'd gone in and out of Vegas earlier on the tour, and it had been just before dawn when they'd passed through the part of the desert that held dark memories for her. Kala had kept herself busy then, drinking staggering amounts of coffee and doing crossword puzzles and sudoku. She'd let Sebast drive, not trusting herself behind the wheel. But she _had_ gotten through it, and would again. The rock star life was definitely going to take her through Las Vegas more than a few times.

Now, though, she was the one driving, and she couldn't take her attention off the road … and the scenery. The highway was fairly well-traveled, which was better than a lonely road would've been. But the desert's stark beauty rolling out for miles on either side kept reminding her of sinister things.

"What's on your mind?" Dustin asked softly.

Kala shook herself. "Old news."

"Three year old news, maybe?" he ventured.

She looked over at him and smiled wanly. "Yeah. This part of the country always creeps me out. I'll get over it, though. I got over my fear of the ocean; I'll get over the desert. I'm not letting that rat bastard win."

"That's my girl." Dustin knew some of what had happened to her. He knew she'd been kidnapped twice by Lex Luthor; he knew the first time she'd almost drowned in the Atlantic Ocean, and the second time she'd been held captive somewhere in Nevada.

"I'm fine, Dustin. Really." Kala wasn't quite sure who she was reassuring, herself or him.

"You will be," he told her, reaching over to stroke a stray lock of hair out of her face. "You're Kala Lane-Kent, sweetheart. Goth rockstar, Superman's god-daughter, daughter of two of the best reporters in Metropolis, stepdaughter to a millionaire and a mad pilot, and sister to the great and mighty Lizardboy. Not to mention, my girl. So no bald psycho with a hatred for heroes is ever gonna get you down."

She had to laugh at that; Dustin could always get a smile from her, no matter where her mind was. "I'm telling Jase that you called him Lizardboy."

His smile was always so open and honest that it almost hurt her heart. "He _is_ Lizardboy. I've seen his dorm room on Skype; Gazeera's cage takes up half of it. And he's always letting him run loose, too, so I'll be talking to him and then this giant lizard crawls up his shoulder."

"I know, right? I think if Mom knew when Uncle Perry gave us our pets how big iguanas got and how long they live, she really _would've_ tossed Gazeera off the balcony. Probably Uncle Perry, too."

"Probably. I wouldn't put it past her. Kala, you sure you're gonna be all right? I can take the wheel, if you want."

Kala took a deep breath and let it out. Part of her wanted to just tell him the truth—that three years ago, she'd killed a man in that desert, a man who wanted to rule the world … and had the means to do it. A man who would have made _her_ queen of all she surveyed. No one outside the immediate family and a few key members of the JLA knew that she'd killed Dru-Zod. Or how close, how very close, she'd come to killing one of Lex's hired thugs along the way. Zod was one thing, he was a direct threat to her sanity, to the world, and to her family's lives. But the thug had just been in her way.

She'd read a lot about psychology after that terrible New Year's. It no longer surprised Kala that it had taken less than a week for Dru-Zod to turn a fairly ordinary half-alien teenager into someone who might have killed so casually. Stranger things had happened. Most people read about Stockholm syndrome and thought it could never happen to them. Kala read about it and knew just how fragile the mind was, how easily the strongest principles could be broken. Most people had no idea that every day they walked a tightrope over disaster, and she knew how far the drop was. Which was why she was out here driving a secondhand van with a sleeping singer and a bunch of instruments in the back, instead of putting on a cape and kicking butt alongside her brother and father.

"Earth to Kala?" Dustin said, and she realized she'd been lost in thought instead of answering him.

"Sorry. There's … a lot on my mind. I love you for offering, but I think I'd rather drive. It keeps me from brooding. Well, it _mostly_ keeps me from brooding." Kala gave him a smile.

"All right. But if you start looking all distant and miserable, I'm gonna turn on the radio and find a country station. I'll even sing along. If that doesn't make you laugh, nothing will." There was genuine warning behind the smile, and Kala knew he'd do it, too. Dustin didn't need to know every shadow in the back of her brain, he only wanted to shine the brightest light he could into her soul.

That was how, an hour later as they stopped for gas, Sebast woke up to Kala belting out the lyrics to _Gunpowder and Lead_. She sang it with a snarl, as if Luthor could somehow hear her. _Try messing with me one more time, Baldy. The ocean, Nevada, wherever you dragged your slimy self off to. I'm my mother's daughter, and I'm not scared anymore._

"What the hell?" Sebast groaned, rubbing his eyes. "When did we switch from Adam Lambert to Miranda Lambert?"

"When she made a song about not taking bullshit," Kala shot back merrily, her dark mood entirely gone by then.

Sebast just looked over at Dustin wearily. "I blame you for this."

"Hey, I think it'd be cool if you covered a country song," he said, and then all three of them broke up laughing.

…

Lois kicked back in her office chair, sipping her coffee. This was the way coffee should be, thick and black and bitter. Dose it with sugar and milk, and it was practically a meal. In the early morning she often claimed that there was too much blood in her caffeine stream, and several reporters would've agreed that pressroom coffee and newspaper ink ran in her veins.

As she meditated upon her coffee, a sound caught Lois' attention. She turned toward the windows behind her office and saw something in the distance, something shiny rocketing along the concrete canyons of Metropolis. _Shiny? What the hell?_

Her question was answered a moment later when some jackass—make that _several_ jackasses—in metal power suits roared past the office building, closely pursued by a familiar blue streak trailing a red cape. Lois didn't even need to glance toward International; she could hear the bitching about the mysterious 'draft' that blew papers off reporters' desks from here.

Any thought of a leisurely morning was gone as Lois barreled into the bullpen. "Phillip! Where the hell…" Her protégé was at his desk, furiously typing something, and he popped his head up like a prairie dog when she yelled his name. Lois ascribed to the Perry White school of reporter training, which boiled down to one maxim: give 'em all the work they can handle, and then give 'em some more. The best reporters would make it happen, much like Lois herself had.

Although seeing him hard at work, just like she was back when she was green and being Perry's favorite mostly meant she got crapped on the most, did make her smile. "…there you are. Get your ass on the story that just _literally_ flew past my window. _Now!_ Do I have to do everything myself?"

Phillip Murray bolted out the door like a well-trained reporter, and Lois watched him go with a fond expression. She turned back toward her office, but movement in her peripheral vision made her snap her head around in time to catch Krista Khan sidling toward the door. "Excuse me? Ms. Khan, the story is happening in Metropolis right now. It is _not_ International's baby, you hear me?"

Krista just gave her a pitiful look. "Actually, Mrs. Lane, I'm leaving for the day. I already cleared it with Mr. Kent."

"Leaving?" Lois sensed shenanigans, and eyed the girl warily. That one reminded her of herself, too. It was no wonder. Kal-El had found himself a fierce young woman with more guts than caution, and he was bringing her along to be the star of _his_ department. Word amongst the administration was that she wanted to be embedded with the Marines in Qurac next year, and was asking to go through Marine Corps boot camp alongside the platoon she'd deploy with.

"Yeah, I kind of…" Krista looked miserable and embarrassed, quickly crossing the room to Lois' side. She moved hesitantly, as if she was in pain. "It's kind of a feminine problem," she whispered, wincing.

Oh Lord, the poor girl wanted to go home because she was having cramps? Seriously? Of course Kal-El would let her; he was a notorious soft touch. Lois huffed in amusement. This from the girl who wanted to deploy with Marines. "Sure, fine, go home. Cuddle up with a heating pad."

Maybe she didn't need to be threatened by this one after all, Lois thought as the girl hobbled out, holding her midsection and getting a variety of pitying or embarrassed looks from the staff. After all, Lois herself had been reporting for the _Quotidienne_ right up until the final month of her pregnancy; she'd gone into false labor in the newsroom, in fact.

Only much later did she realize that Krista Khan was more like her than even Lois guessed.

…

Trouble in Metropolis, and Kal-El was on the scene as usual. This time it was a high-tech gang of terrorists. Bad enough at any time, but _these_ guys were all wearing high-powered flight suits with integrated weapons systems. _Someone funded them very well,_ Kal-El thought, flying at several times the speed of sound to intercept fire from a plasma gun. It tickled as the superheated ions bounced off his skin.

The problem here wasn't the terrorists themselves. He could account for them easily. The problem was the amount of collateral damage they were causing. Kal-El was behind the game, reacting instead of acting, saving the innocent victims and trying to prevent more destruction instead of swatting the perpetrators out of the air. Sometimes he just needed to be in two places at once, and not even with super-speed could he manage….

A despairing cry behind him, and Kal-El looked around to see one of the terrorists dropping out of the sky, accompanied by a red and blue blur. "I've got your six, Blue," a cheerful voice rang out.

_Jason. Excellent timing. I just hope you're not missing class. _"Thanks, SB," he called back. Reliable backup turned the odds in their favor. Supersonic flight suits and plasma guns weren't too effective against a pair of Kryptonians—and if one of those Kryptonians didn't fly, that just meant he was springing up, seemingly out of nowhere, to snatch his next target.

They worked in seamless tandem that didn't need the comm. Kal-El knew where his son would be at any given second, knew what his next priority was, and knew he could trust Jason to watch his back. That gave him time to put out a smoldering fire with a blast of super-breath as Jason caught a massive billboard that was falling toward a busy street.

Kal-El drew their fire next, as Jason picked them off one by one, overwhelming them by sheer strength. The armor they wore was strong, but it tore like paper when a determined Kryptonian decided to peel it off. From there it was an easy matter of leaving each one concussed and trussed for the police—Jason's personal version of Batclan's 'bagged and tagged'. He had grown adept at applying just enough force with a flick of his fingers to render a man unconscious without causing permanent damage.

It didn't get difficult until the last man. He tried taking hostages, landing amidst a swanky party on an office building's rooftop terrace and pointing his weapon indiscriminately at the crowd of guests. "No closer, Superman, or I'll—" the man shouted, but it was already too late.

Jason jumped to the rooftop. Eighty stories, straight up, landing lightly on his feet. "Didn't you read the Metropolis guidebook? Taking hostages is _never_ a good idea," he quipped.

The man swung his weapon toward Jason, away from the crowd. It was integrated into his suit, so it wasn't possible to simply take it away from him. But without it aimed at innocent civilians…

…the next thing the terrorist knew, he was two miles above Metropolis, with Superman holding his plasma gun aimed upward. "This is the part where you surrender," he said.

Of course the man struggled. Kal-El dealt with him; he rendered the weapon nonfunctional and locked the man's wrists together, crimping the titanium alloy armor together with careful pressure. Then he could drop this one off to the police.

Meanwhile Jason needed a little rescue of his own. Kal-El chuckled to himself as he flew back to his son. A starry-eyed young woman, one of the partygoers they'd just rescued, was beaming at Jason and saying, "That was amazing, Superboy! We're so lucky you were here."

"I learned from the best," he told her with a grin.

"Stick around for the party!" someone called, holding aloft a glass of champagne.

"Thanks, but no thanks. I'm still on call," Jason replied, and with a final wave he bounded off toward his father.

They ended up atop the _Daily Planet_ globe. "Do you have the time to talk, son?" Kal-El asked. He could call Jason that, even in uniform. He had carefully established that he called several of the younger male heroes 'son', though with the girls it was always a respectful 'miss'.

"My afternoon class got cancelled—the professor has the flu. So I came looking for some trouble." Jason grinned. "Looks like I found it. Do you hear her?" He couldn't say _Mom_, but they both knew exactly who he meant by the muttered profanity several floors below them.

Kal-El smiled. "Those guys were international. She'll end up having to share the byline across two departments. And I think Ms. Khan actually got the lead first."

"That always irritates her," Jason said fondly. His parents' newsroom rivalry never failed to amuse him these days. It was even funnier considering that their two protégés considered themselves a team, and were perfectly willing to share or even hand over credit when needed.

"Well, if you're so complacent, _you_ can do the interview," Kal-El teased.

Jason looked at his boots intently. "Actually, um, I can't get hog-tied by a pair of reporters trying to appease their boss. I've got a date I need to get to."

"A date, huh?" Kal-El smiled, and Jason blushed. He'd been quite surprised the other day to find Cassie Sandsmark at his dinner table, but once the circumstances were explained, Kal-El was happy to have her there. Although it had taken a few minutes to put her at her ease; many of the younger heroes were still somewhat shy of the original League members, especially the founding Trinity. Usually that didn't apply to Cassie, who was Diana's protégé and a demigoddess besides, but hanging out with Superman was different when she was dating his son. All it had taken was one classically Clark Kent cheesy joke to get Cassie laughing, and then she was herself again, at the price of a groan and eye-roll from Lois.

Kal-El had watched the two teenagers together before letting himself form an opinion. Normally he was ambivalent about dating within the team; he'd seen a few nasty breakups that had challenged cohesion among JLA members. Add teenage volatility to the mix, and things could get even more complicated. Cassie was smart, sensible, and steady, a lot like Jason himself, and they had a great working relationship already. The romance looked promising, and Kal-El congratulated his son as soon as Cassie was out of earshot.

Later, he and Lois had talked about it. Lois had been a little worried that Jason was _too_ attached to Elise, and seeing him dating another girl assuaged that fear. Oh, he still loved Elise and probably always would, but he wasn't obsessed or anything. And Cassie was clearly good for him. She brought out his playful, geeky side, whereas running with the Titans had made him more serious and deliberate.

"So I take it you and Wonder Girl have plans," Kal-El said. "When are you meeting her?"

"She's going to call when she gets back in. She's busy at the moment, but since we both have a free day…." Jason shrugged, looking sheepish. Both teens had incredibly busy lives, and it was no wonder they jumped at a chance for time together.

"Might as well make the best of it. I'm sure she'll find a reason to head back soon. In that case, son, I'll deal with the reporters—including the one in the corner office." With that he clapped Jason on the shoulder and stood up. "Good work."

"Thanks," Jason said. In uniform, they shook hands instead of hugging, but the smiles on both of their faces tended to add support to the cover story about Jason being a clone of Kal-El.

Kal-El watched his son bound away, hearing a clamor in the office building below him. Lois didn't sound pleased; something about a reporter being too smart for her own good. He didn't get the chance to think deeper on it, because the roof door opened and Phillip Murray stuck his head out. "Superman?" he called, uncertainly.

"Hello, Mr. Murray," he replied, stepping off the globe and floating down to conversational distance. The actual interview was brief, just a quick reporting of the facts, and ended as always with Kal-El saying, "Please give Mrs. Lane-Kent my regards."

"I will. Thank you, Superman," the young reporter said, and ran back inside. Lois did keep the poor boy on his toes.

He arrived back at his desk only to find two emails waiting for him.

Mr. Kent—

Had to leave suddenly. Not feeling well. Will try to do some research from home to make up for the absence.

It was from his own rising star, Krista Khan. Kal-El frowned slightly. She'd seemed fine earlier. Krista was normally very reliable, and he couldn't remember her ever leaving in the middle of the day. He clicked the next message in his inbox, which was from Lois.

Kent—

If your pet reporter LIED to me to go scoop mine, you'll sleep on the couch for a week and she and I are going to have a TALK.

Kal-El sighed heavily. He could see where this was going, and quickly replied to Krista's email with a reminder that unplanned absences generally required a doctor's note, and a hint as to where she should direct that research. Then he replied to Lois, telling her that Phillip got the Superman interview so he should have the byline on the front page, but he'd put one of his own people on researching the international angle for a companion piece.

Why had he _ever_ agreed to take a management position?

…

Corrin took her to a funky little pizza parlor for lunch. The food was really good; Elise had white pizza with feta cheese and olive oil and shredded fresh basil atop it. Fresh, delicious, and best of all, within a college student's budget. Corrin was working on a calzone with mushrooms and sliced meatballs, taking bites between telling her how his courses were going.

Elise let him talk. Corrin was _normal_, something she'd almost lost touch with. At some point in her teens, talking about her boyfriend's alien heritage and speculating on the motives of supervillains had become commonplace. Sometimes it was nice to be ordinary again. Well, as ordinary as anybody going to Berkeley and majoring in chemistry _could_ be.

The televisions set up around the room were tuned to the news, which Elise largely ignored. She didn't like to watch the news while she was eating, in case something spoiled her appetite. So much of what the media reported was basically crap, no matter which side of the political spectrum it came from. Having spent so much time at the Lane-Kents, Elise now had a tendency to throw things at the screen and shout things like, 'Where's the facts?' or 'Yellow journalism!'

At least, she tried to ignore the news, but then a story came up that caught her eye from across the room. A flash of red and blue crossed the screen in pursuit of something metallic. "Hey, Corrin, you seeing this?" she said, sitting up and focusing on the nearest screen.

He turned to look. A female reporter was describing the day's events in Metropolis; an attack by terrorists, foiled by the combination of Superman and Superboy. Elise's chest went tight at seeing Jason knocking bad guys out of the sky with his trademark grin. It didn't change what she'd thought earlier about wishing for a slice of normalcy. Sometimes she missed having a little piece of stardust in her life. It was just all the larger-than-life drama that came with it that bothered her.

"Oh, yeah. You're from Metropolis after all. Ever get to meet 'em?" Corrin asked with a little smile.

If only she could answer. _Well, kinda. You see, Superboy there is my ex-boyfriend, and I spent most of my weekends chilling at the apartment Superman shares with Lois Lane and their kids._ Oh yeah, that wouldn't send him screaming for the hills. "Not really," she laughed, sounding hollow to her own ears.

It apparently convinced Corrin, though. He changed the topic, and Elise went along with it. Corrin was blessedly drama-free.

…

Cassie was in deep trouble and knew it. Superpowers were pretty awesome and all, until you faced off against someone with the same skill set. She'd put aside her lasso for this one, choosing to fight with a staff like Tim's. Versatility and all that, plus her lasso wouldn't do much good in this fight. So far though, it wasn't going well.

She blocked and tried to parry, only succeeding in getting the staff struck out of her hands by a blow that left her palms stinging. "Crap," she muttered, relying on flight to get her out of range of her opponent's staff. It only worked for a moment, as the other woman chased her into the sky.

A moment was all she needed, though. Her opponent had neglected to secure Cassie's fallen staff, and she dove down to snatch it. Now they were fighting in midair, and with an extra dimension to work with, Cassie was a little more comfortable. She even pulled an excellent fake-out that left her opponent's guard low when it should've been high. With a triumphant cry, Cassie struck at full strength.

The other woman couldn't get her staff up in time, but caught the blow on her arm instead of her head as Cassie had intended. Then Cassie realized she'd left an opening … right before her opponent's staff came up and whacked her in the chin hard enough that stars burst in Cassie's vision.

She lost her equilibrium and spun over backwards with the force of the blow, landing hard on the packed sand below. "Ow," she muttered thickly, blinking to clear her sight.

The first thing she saw was her opponent offering her a hand up. "Nice feint. You've been sparring with Donna, I see." Diana smiled at her warmly.

Cassie took her hand and let the Princess of Themyscira help her up. "Yeah, she pulled that one on me last time. Now I just have to fix the hole in my guard." Donna had plenty to deal with right now, but sparring with Cassie helped keep her mind off it.

"She's pulled it on me often enough when we practiced. I can help you with your guard, but would you like to rest a moment first?" Diana was nothing if not gracious, especially here. Sometimes people forgot she was quite literally royalty, with everything that implied.

"Sure," Cassie said, relieved at the chance of a break. Amazons trained hard, and Diana was one of the most intense. But they also took their relaxing very seriously. The two women strolled away from the practice arena, heading toward the cliffs that overlooked the sea. Paradise Island lived up to its name; the wooded path they took was carpeted in wild thyme, and shaded by fruit trees. Cassie snagged an apple and bit into it, savoring the crisp, tart juice. Perfect post-workout snack, in her opinion.

Moments later they came out to a perfect overlook, with marble benches and a view of waves that seemed to go on forever. Diana sat down, and Cassie dropped easily onto sun-warmed marble opposite her. "So," Diana said, "anything new and interesting in your life?"

Cassie swallowed. She hadn't yet had a chance to tell her mentor what was up, but by the glint in Diana's blue eyes, she already knew. "I'm seeing somebody, actually," she said.

"Mm-hmm." Wonder Woman had one of those great contagious smiles—come to think of it, Superman did too. Maybe it was a shared Trinity trait, and no one knew that Batman had it too because he never smiled.

Grinning back, Cassie said, "So yeah. Jason finally noticed that I am, actually, a girl. And that I'm interested."

Diana laughed. "I honestly thought you were going to have to hire one of those planes that tow the banners you can see for five miles. I even thought about volunteering my jet."

Chuckling, Cassie replied, "I might've taken you up on it. Honestly, this girl he's so hung up on sounds awesome, but she's made it clear she moved on, so no harm, no foul. Still, I thought I was gonna have to drop a really big hint to get his attention."

"Apparently Kryptonians are pretty strictly monogamous," Diana mused. "The men, at least, fall in love a lot like a meteor falling out of the sky."

"Tell me about it. I went to dinner at his parents' place, which was _awkward_ since he neglected to mention to them that we were dating," Cassie rolled her eyes at that, "but anyway, just about any time Superman and Lois lock eyes, you can almost hear the rest of the world fading into the background."

"They are an inspiration," Diana said quietly.

"They're a Hallmark card. In a good way," Cassie remarked.

That got her a smile. "So it's working out with Jason?"

"Yeah. I mean, we always got along as friends and partners. This … this is even better. He's so … Jason's a sweetheart, you know, a little _too_ nice sometimes. But he can be pretty intense. Like, when he listens, he's not one of those guys who's just planning what he's going to say next. Or how to get in your pants, for that matter." Cassie scowled, and Diana echoed the expression, which got them both chuckling again. "Jason listens like everything I say is important."

Diana nodded, and Cassie thought that might have been a little too serious. It was a mind trip to be having a casual girlfriends-type discussion about guys with _Wonder Woman_, but she was used to such things by now. Diana was never standoffish, and always encouraged people to talk to her. Still, Cassie didn't want to make this sound like the Love Affair of the Century, when she and Jason weren't quite sure if that was what it was yet. So she grinned and added, "Plus, Super-hugs are the best."

Diana tipped her head back and laughed. "That they are. Cassie, I'm glad to see you happy with him."

"I'm glad to _be_ happy. And to be with him." She blushed a little at that, tossing her apple core among the trees where the seeds might someday take root.

"Good. And now, shall we work on blocking the return for that parry?"

Time to get her butt kicked again. "Sure," Cassie said.


	10. In the Race for Disaster

**Author's Note:** This chapter deals with a major event in canon. Yes, we're writing AU, but some things just don't need to be changed and probably couldn't be improved. Therefore certain lines of dialogue in this fic are taken directly from _Batman: Under the Red Hood_. Credit for those lines—which the authors personally feel are amazingly powerful and should not be tampered with at all—should be given to Judd Winick. *hats off, deep bows*

* * *

><p>It had been coming for weeks, all of Gotham in lockdown and Tim safely sequestered in Titans Tower, when the situation in Gotham finally exploded. But nothing prepared the young heroes for what they saw and heard that night.<p>

Silently they watched the drama unfolding on multiple screens around them—but not in silence, for the air was filled with the noise and cross-chatter of Gotham's comm frequency. Tim stared as images of Gotham City—his city—flickered across the screen. The usual nightly crime, but things had escalated. The streets were wild tonight. Two days ago, Black Mask had done something unprecedented. He'd called a meeting of all of his lieutenants.

And promptly killed them all.

He'd finally decided to throw in with Red Hood. There seemed to be no other way out for Mask. Fighting the Hood didn't work; he was better trained than anyone Mask could recruit. Hiring assassins to take him down didn't work either. With a little help from Batman, Hood had escaped that, too—and he'd killed one of them with a stun gun to the eyes. There was one undisputed master of the city's underworld at the moment, and he ruled by blood and terror at levels that freaked out Gotham's masked rogues. So Mask had had no choice but to throw in with him.

When he did, Hood changed the terms of the deal. In a rage, Black Mask killed him, but it turned out to be an impostor, dressed as Red Hood. Everything had been arranged so that Batman would arrive at the scene of the confrontation just in time to watch the impostor die at Mask's hands. Just so he could relive Jason Todd's death again. Tim hated him for that. He knew what losing Jason had done to Bruce; he'd become Robin because Batman wasn't whole without a Robin. Bruce needed that balance, and Tim had stepped into the role for Bruce's sake.

It only got worse. Tim had been watching the ripples spread out over his city for two days, trapped in Titans Tower by his stupid cast. Bruce wouldn't let him come home while he recuperated, and Dick wouldn't side with him either. Both of them thought Jason Todd was too damn dangerous, and too vindictive, to risk him coming home again. Babs was willing to patch Tim in on the communications, but only if he stayed safely at Titans Tower. And to make _sure_ he stayed there, she'd sent her protégé Steph to keep an eye on him, concocting a fake field trip to account for her absence over the weekend.

Now things were coming to a head. Driven to desperation, Black Mask had sprung Joker out of Arkham. True to his nature, Joker had turned on his benefactor, using Mask and some of his men as bait to lure out Red Hood. That, according to the news broadcast playing on the screens right now, had been Hood's plan all along. Everything else was just window dressing. The real goal had been to get Joker out into the open.

And, as Tim watched, Red Hood snatched up the Joker right from underneath Batman's nose. While the Batwing was busy putting out the fire Joker had started—saving the lives of Black Mask and his goons—Hood escaped with his hostage.

"Holy shit," Steph muttered beside him. "All that, all of that, just to get Joker out where he could nab him. What the _hell_?"

"Joker's the one who killed him," Tim murmured, watching the screen and listening to Bruce calling Oracle. His next destination was Crime Alley, where it all began. Where Bruce's parents had died. Where Jason had drawn Bruce's attention by trying to steal the tires off the Batmobile. Tim knew this was the final showdown. The end was the beginning was the end.

Tim was so absorbed that he hadn't heard the door open behind him, and didn't realize Cassie was in the room until she said his name. He started slightly, glancing away just long enough to register her presence. And then the scene gripped his attention again, as Batman and a former Robin fought it out in Crime Alley under the watchful eyes of Oracle's camera network.

Cassie placed her hand on his shoulder and squeezed slightly. There was nothing she could say, no words of comfort. Steph was sitting on the arm of his chair, snuggled as close to his other side as she could get, but in spite of both of them Tim felt hollow and alone.

The sad part was, he'd _idolized_ Batman and Robin. And not just Dick. He'd been a _fanboy_ of the Dynamic Duo; he'd been thrilled by Jason when he was Robin. So much vibrant, insouciant _life_, so much daring. So very unlike his own blue-blooded upbringing. If he'd had the chance to know him, Tim thought he would've liked him.

Not now. Now Jay was doing everything in his power to wound Batman, coming within an inch of killing him. They fought it out, no holds barred, and Tim saw a side of Batman he thought he'd healed. The violence, the anger, the guilt, all those things that had driven Bruce so close to the edge, it was all right back in his face again. It was as if he'd never been there, like his contribution to the legacy had been erased, like the clock had been rolled back.

The door opened again, and Tim heard Jason's voice. "I got here as soon as I could." He came in and went right to Tim, putting both hands on his shoulders. At that moment, Tim was completely wrapped up by his friends, but nothing could touch the ice in his heart.

Jason saw what was happening on screen, and took a shaky breath. "Oh, man."

"Yeah," Steph said, lacing her fingers between Tim's. Oracle had them patched into Batman's audio, and they could hear Jay as well as Bruce could, hear the raw heartbreak and rage in his voice. Steph bit her lip; a distant, analytical part of Tim thought she was feeling pity for Jay. He could've warned her that pity would only get her killed, against this one. Better that Steph had never gone against him.

Jay leaped, Bruce followed. Now there was nothing to see but the empty alley, as the fight continued into an abandoned apartment. Bruce spoke then, harsh syllables freighted with grief. "I know I failed you. But … I tried to save you, Jason. … I'm … I'm trying to save you now."

Tim bowed his head, his shoulders tensing. To hear _Batman_'s voice that broken, that pained … his idol and mentor brought low at last. And there was nothing, _nothing_, that anyone in this room could do about it, regardless of powers or skills. Either Jason or Cassie could've made it to Gotham in seconds, but for once Bruce was right. None of them had any place in the coming confrontation.

"Is _that_ what you think this is about? Your letting me die? I don't know what clouds your judgment worse: your guilt, or your antiquated sense of morality," Jay spat back, his voice on the ragged edge of sanity. And then, abruptly, it smoothed for the space of one sentence. "Bruce, I forgive you for not saving me."

Tim stiffened. Was there hope, maybe just a shred of hope? Shreds were all they had to cling to some nights, and out of those tattered hopes they'd woven a legacy and a mission and a _family_, even. Perhaps, just perhaps, even this nightmare might come to an end that wouldn't leave them all shattered….

His hopes were in vain. Red Hood snarled, "But why … why on God's earth…." A crash, splintering wood. "…_is __**he**__ still alive_?"

And then the laugh, that godforsaken laugh, like the howl of a rabid coyote in a bombed-out wasteland. Every Bat knew that laugh, every one of them felt skin-crawling fear at the sound of it. Over the comm, Tim heard Babs gasp, and beside him Steph cringed.

Realistically, they'd known this moment would come. Red Hood had taken Joker for a reason, and this final confrontation—the three of them, Batman, his son, and his foe—was the purpose behind the months of plotting and planning. But knowing Joker was in it somewhere, and hearing him cackling in delight at this reunion, were two different things. Tim felt like he couldn't breathe.

"Who's got a camera?"Joker asked. "Get one of me and the kid, first. Then, you and me. Then the three of us."

That he had the audacity to say that to Batman made Tim grind his teeth in rage. Oh, he hated Jay Todd for a multitude of reasons, and the cast that was still on his arm was a score they needed to settle, but the Joker was an enemy _all_ of them could unite against.

And then Joker added, his voice sly, "Then one with a crowbar."

In spite of everything, Tim snarled at that.

…

Jason's heart seized in his chest, and he shuddered at that maniacal voice. It was the _cheer_ in his tone that iced Jason's blood. The sheer, empty glee, like the darkness between stars. He might not have gotten the crowbar reference if not for the way Tim _snarled_ at the words, and then he knew.

_He __**beat**__ Jay Todd to death with a crowbar,_ Jason thought, chills dancing down his back. This boy who shared his name—this boy who had turned so deadly—had been horribly beaten, and Joker was _laughing_ about it, making sly little asides. In that moment Jason hated him as fervently as any of Batclan.

"_Bastard_," Steph growled, her voice choked with tears. Not so long ago she'd wanted to take a chunk out of Red Hood's hide—and Jason was sure she still did—but she wanted Joker more. _All_ of them wanted to pound him into a bloody smear.

"I'm cutting you out of the feed," Babs' digitized voice abruptly said. In spite of the layers of encryption, they could catch a hint of a tremor, and remembered just who had fired the shot that paralyzed her. Obviously they were only hearing what Bruce heard, not transmitting to his unit. Oracle wouldn't have risked distracting him at a moment like this.

"_No_," all four of them replied in unison. Tim continued, "We deserve to know how this ends, Oracle. It's Batman's showdown and we won't interfere—we'd get killed if we did, Hood's proven he'll target us—but we _deserve_ to know."

A new voice on Babs' end of the line: Dick Grayson. "Leave it up, O. And—God help them both."

Jay's voice was getting louder and harsher, each word ripped from a place of terrible rage—and pain. "…the thousands who have suffered, the friends he's crippled, I thought … I thought _killing __**me**_—that I'd be the last person you'd ever let him hurt."

Jason could spare a thought for Babs, hearing this, knowing she was part of Hood's motivation. Maybe she was right, maybe none of them should've been privy to this, but it was too late for that. They were here, bearing witness to something awful and painfully honest.

Red Hood was saying that if Joker had killed Bruce, Hood would've hunted him down and sent him to hell. Jason could understand that. If Luthor had succeeded in killing Mom—or _Kala_, who was onstage somewhere and safe from all this—Jason would've found him, no matter how long it took. No matter how sacred the code was, no matter how unfair and dishonorable it was for a Kryptonian to use lethal force. Dad had stopped him the once, but if he'd had to deal with the actuality of it, had to stand in some cemetery during a funeral for someone he loved, taken by murderous whim…. Jason had always had the most even temper of the two twins, but it was really just a very long fuse. Most things didn't bother him, and he let even major irritations pass. Once he actually got _angry_, though, he was far more frightening that his hotheaded sister. He knew himself and what he would've done.

"You don't understand," Bruce began, and Jay snarled at him. Jason shuddered again as Bruce told him _why_ he didn't kill—not that it was too hard, but that it was too _easy_. How very _much_ he wanted Joker dead, and all the torture he'd put him through beforehand. Beside Tim, Steph curled into a tight little ball, snuggled as close as she could get. Jason put a hand on her shoulder, too. Obviously Bruce had forgotten all about the audio link in his comm; he was one scary sonofagun, once you got beneath the cowl and the stoic demeanor.

"But if I do that, if I allow myself to go down into that place … I'll never come back," Bruce finished, his voice harsh.

Cassie looked over at Jason at those words. Her blue eyes were stormy, troubled. The Amazons occasionally used lethal force, but she herself had never come close to killing. The thought of Bruce—whose rule against killing was absolutely inviolate—admitting to _wanting_ to murder Joker that much was terrifying. Jason slid one arm around her shoulders and drew her close. Not that any of them could protect each other. _Batman_ hadn't been able to protect his son, what would make any of them think they could guard each other from such things?

…

Steph burrowed into Tim's side as Red Hood snarled back at Batman. "Why do all the cub scouts in spandex _always_ say that? 'If I cross that line, there's no coming back.'" He sounded more and more like a lost, hurt little boy instead of a savage thug a he continued, ending with, "…and doing it because … because he took me away from you." Tears welled up at that, and Cassie sniffled too.

She knew, better than most, that the world wasn't black and white. Everything was shades of gray. Jason goddamn Todd was a very, very dark gray—but that didn't mean she couldn't feel sorry for him, hearing his broken voice over the comm. Bruce had told her that her compassion and sympathy were weaknesses, but Steph didn't believe that. She wasn't a genius like Tim or Babs, she wasn't the level of badass martial artist that Dick or Bruce himself was, but she went after this with her _whole heart_. No one could say Stephanie Brown didn't give a damn. She genuinely _cared_ for people, and she let them know it.

From the sound of it, Jay had no idea how much he was mourned. No idea how far off the rails Bruce had gone. No idea how even now, the mention of his name could put a shadow in Dick or Alfred's eyes. The poor bastard—not that she didn't want to kick seven kinds of shit out of him for beating up Tim, but still. She could afford to empathize with him. There was enough room in her heart for anger and sorrow.

"I can't. I'm sorry. I just can't." That was Bruce, _apologizing_. Steph's jaw dropped. The big bad Bat didn't explain or apologize or even thank his Robins most of the time.

And then Jason dropped the bomb: he meant to kill Joker, right in front of him, or force Bruce to kill _him_. His voice was still ragged with heartbreak, but the rage was coming back as he screwed himself up for _someone's_ death, maybe his own. "I'm going to blow his addled, deranged _brains_ out—and if you want to stop it … you're going to shoot _me_. Right in my _face_."

"No!" Tim cried out in a strangled voice. He almost bolted out of his seat, but Jason grabbed him, swept him into a bear-hug. There was no time now, nothing any of them could do; if they interfered they'd only get themselves killed. Tim kicked and struggled against Jason's grip, shouting, "Don't make him do it, don't make him choose, you selfish bastard, _you'll kill him if he has to lose you __**again**__!_"

Steph—who had been fired as Robin, told she was a failure, cast out and swept aside—shuddered as Joker laughed. Even with a gun to his head, he laughed. The deranged clown actually sounded _happy_ about all this. Then again, no matter what happened, he won tonight. This kind of madness—chaos, pain, death—was right up his alley, even if it ended with his brains splashed all over a wall.

Jay was counting to three, and Steph squeezed her eyes shut. Not that they were seeing anything, but this was like the end of a really horrible horror movie, and all she wanted to do was hide under a blanket somewhere. Babs had to be just as painfully enthralled as they were, or she would've killed the feed by now.

"One."

"_Don't_."

"Two."

"_**NO!**_"

"Thr—"

A metallic clang, the _thuck!_ of metal meeting flesh, and Joker's wild laughter. Cassie and Steph both screamed, and Tim thrashed against Jason. None of them knew what had just happened … or who was dead….

And then Joker's gleeful voice shouted, "You got him! You expert, rootin'-tootin', eagle-eyed goth marksman sonofabitch! Ya banked that bata-thingie off the pipe!" He bayed laughter again. "Oh, _God_! I love it! You managed to find a way to win…."

Now they could hear pained gurgling in the background, Bruce panting harshly into his mike, and then Joker's voice rose to a snarl. "…and everybody still loses! Except _me_, my dark little pumpkin pies. I'm the only one who's gonna get what he wants tonight!"

Only when Bruce shouted, "_No!_" did Tim stop struggling, and even then it was in vain. Seconds later came a gunshot, and a loud explosion. The camera view of the alley suddenly lit up with the haunting red-gold of flame.

From Babs' end of the line came a strangled, "_No! B—!_"

Then Dick's voice. "I'm on it," he snapped.

"You kids _stay put_. I mean it," Dinah said over the open mike. Steph startled; she hadn't even realized the chairwoman was over there with Babs, but she should've expected it. The whole Birds of Prey crew would be watching this one just as closely as the Titans, though they'd been ordered by Bruce not to interfere.

"Joker triggered that explosion," Tim said in a choked voice. "He did. He killed them, all three of them. That maniacal, murderous sonofabitch…!"

"No," Cassie said, still sniffling. "We don't know that. This is Batman we're talking about. It takes more than an explosion to put him down for the count. Don't you dare talk like that, Tim."

Steph wanted to believe her, but the tears fell anyway. "It can't end this way," she whimpered. She didn't want to feel sorry for Jay, not really, but she couldn't help it. Not after what she'd heard. Everything Jay said and did came down to one thing: _why wasn't I good enough_? And she knew that feeling all too well. Jay had almost killed her boyfriend … but he hadn't finished the job.

Jason was busy holding Tim, but Cassie reached over the chair and hugged Steph to her. "It doesn't end like that," she said, and Steph wondered who she was trying to convince: Steph, or herself?

…

Babs swept her glasses off, dropping them carelessly aside, and buried her face in her hands. So this was how it all came down. Jay, insouciant pain-in-the-ass Jay, the wild child—but never the bad one, no, forget what Bruce thought about him now, he hadn't been a bad kid, he just had a wild streak and he liked the fighting a little too much, but for God's sake he'd throw himself in front of bullets for a woman or a child. That was the thing that triggered the worst of his anger, harm against the defenseless. Babs remembered that about him, and wondered if maybe she'd been the only one to see it. Even here, even now, even as Red Hood, he'd killed the thugs and the dealers who preyed on children. Somewhere inside that featureless red mask was the boy he'd been. A boy she'd loved—the obnoxious little brother who'd metaphorically pulled her hair, but whom she would've defended with her life. Babs had known from the first that he had a streak of darkness in him, a taste for violence … but then, who among them didn't? Even Bruce had admitted it. They couldn't survive being who they were without a ruthless hunger for justice.

She wept for him, her shoulders shaking, and wept for Bruce too. Even if he survived the explosion, worse damage had been done tonight. Babs remembered how he was after Jay's death. Her photographic memory was a curse, sometimes. She could still remember the look in his eyes when he'd come to her hospital room and been told that she would never walk again. Hell, Babs could remember the exact intonation and inflection the doctor who'd said that had used. The day her life changed for good.

Dinah pulled her into a tight hug, cheek pressed against her hair. No words of comfort; nothing needed to be said. They both knew all too well that tonight wasn't going to end well. Even the best-case scenario was awful. If Bruce lived, and Jay and Joker both survived to end up in Arkham—since that was where Red Hood would likely be sent—that wouldn't erase anything that had been said or done tonight.

Over the comm, Dick's voice came in loud and clear as he and Helena raced toward Crime Alley. "ETA five minutes."

"Stand down, Nightwing." Bruce's voice, coughing with smoke from the explosion, and Babs dashed the tears from her eyes and snatched up her glasses to patch into his comm.

"Status, Batman?" she asked, and her voice was remarkably steady even if her cheeks were still wet.

"Joker's alive. No sign of Red Hood." His voice was a gruff, emotionless rasp, and Babs swallowed her despair. They were back to _this_ again, back to Bruce losing himself in Batman to the point of almost becoming a machine.

"We'll see if we can pick up his trail," Dick said.

"Leave Hood to me," Bruce growled back.

"Sorry, comm's shorting out, can't hear a word you're saying," Dick replied sharply, and Babs smiled in spite of herself. No matter how much he might want to handle this himself, Bruce had to appreciate the help. He'd never admit to it, and Dick was mad as hell, but they were still working together.

"We need to keep in touch with the kids," Dinah murmured, and Babs bit back a curse. She should've never let Tim and Steph listen in to this nightmare—but from the moment Joker laughed, her attention had been divided.

Switching channels so she was broadcasting to them, Babs demanded, "Status, Titans."

"Locked down and awaiting orders." That was Wonder Girl's voice, and Babs wondered when she'd shown up. Then again, the kids were all pretty close. It wouldn't surprise her if Superboy was there, too.

"None at this time. The situation is under control." Even as she spoke she was monitoring fire and rescue's progress toward the scene.

"We'll be fine," Steph's tearful voice told her. "I mean, B's okay, right?"

_No, and he won't be for a very long time._ No need to traumatize her with that, though. "You heard him report in. Where's Red Robin?"

"Superboy dragged him off once we heard B report," Cassie said. "It'll take both of us to keep him here. He's frantic to get home."

"I'm sure he'll be cleared to return once we have a fix on Red Hood," Babs replied. "Until then, keep him safe."

With that mike closed, Dinah said quietly, "You think we ought to alert the rest of the Trinity?"

Babs' first instinct was to refuse. Bat-business stayed in Bat-clan; that was how it had always been. But she wasn't Bruce, for all that she was so much like him. Babs took a deep breath. "He'll be pissed, but it's the right thing to do. I'll give them clearance, and he can complain later."

"We need all the friends we can get right now," Dinah murmured.

…

The Themysciran embassy was mostly empty at night, and Diana strolled its halls, alone with her thoughts. And these days, Bruce occupied her mind more often than not.

He was a difficult man to love, especially now. He put his city ahead of everything, and he reacted to any threat by refusing assistance and relying on his own will and his own trained soldiers. Diana's patience had been sorely tested by the months of Gotham being on lockdown. She and Clark could have _helped_ him, but no, Bruce denied them entry to his city as if he were its king.

Diana wouldn't have accepted that autocratic decree, but Clark had wanted her to. Bruce was on edge, and letting him control things helped his frame of mind. And he had been handling things possibly better than they could; he was able to anticipate Jay's moves. After all, he'd trained the boy.

This war against one of his own was taking a lot more out of him than he would admit, though, and Diana was losing her patience. Sooner or later she was going to march over there and give him a piece of her mind—a generous piece, at that. One of his best attributes was his immense resolve, but one of his worst was the sheer stubbornness that was its opposite side.

Even as she thought that, her cell phone chirped. Diana opened it to see a text she'd never expected. _O here. You are cleared for the city. Assistance needed but will not be requested. Expect call on secure line._

Of course. Diana took a deep breath, wondering just what the hell had happened, and moved to answer the secure encrypted line Oracle had had installed in the embassy a few years ago. It was already ringing when she reached it, and she lifted the handset with trepidation. "Tell me," was all she said.

"You'd better sit down," Oracle cautioned, and the tone of her voice even through the digitizer told Diana just how bad it was going to be.

…

Lois received a fairly strange text message, from a number she didn't immediately recognize. _Songbird here. He'll be late getting home tonight. Don't worry._

Hmm. The only hero she knew with a bird-themed code name was Black Canary, and it certainly seemed to fit. Plus the area code was Gotham. Lois texted back, using the JLA's code for operations. _Card game tonight?_

The reply came back quickly. _No, personal. Support for a friend._

Well, that didn't tell her much. There were limits to what could be expressed in code, but Lois was a reporter, after all. She opened her laptop and headed to the _Gotham Gazette's_ web site, hunting for breaking news.

And found it. Red Hood on the rampage. Lois read the stories—for once without criticizing other reporters' skills, or lack thereof—and didn't realize she was biting her lip until she tasted blood. "Oh, Bruce," she groaned, seeing where he'd taken Joker back to Arkham. Again. The news stories didn't have any information about Red Hood's motives, but Lois knew more than they did.

She knew Red Hood was Jason Todd, Batman's second Robin, Bruce's son in all but blood. She knew the boy had been killed by Joker, or at least everyone _thought_ he'd been killed. If his master plan came down to himself, Bruce, and Joker, then it could only be about one thing: vengeance denied.

Lois was a general's daughter, and though some people forgot it, she'd been through the Metropolis Police Academy, too. She understood use-of-force doctrine, and she had made her peace with the notion of lethal force long ago. In some situations, it was justified. Kal-El disagreed, but he was operating under a different set of rules. For him, with his powers, killing would have been all too easy. And besides, he was invulnerable to most things, making self-defense an unlikely reason.

Given the opportunity, Lois would have killed Lex Luthor; she'd tried to do so before, and only a mirrored wall had spared his life. She firmly believed that some people were beyond rehabilitation, and that confinement in prison or in an asylum for _life_ was crueler than a death sentence. If ever faced with the choice, she'd have preferred death over life in Arkham or Blackgate. Not only were those places far from humane _or_ secure, they let criminals learn from each other, becoming even more deadly when they escaped, even more entrenched in the criminal underworld.

The courts wouldn't give Joker the death penalty because he was insane. Lois understood that, but there were more important issues than whether or not he was responsible for his own action. Joker was a clear and present danger to everyone in his path. He ought to be shot like a mad dog, put down not out of revenge or rage but simply because the rest of society deserved the right not to live in fear of him.

That was simplifying the issue, not looking at all the implications, but Lois remembered how Kal-El had been the night they'd gotten the news about Bruce's Jay. Until then, no one had targeted the sidekicks. The Teen Titans got into dangerous situations on a regular basis, but none of them had _died_. They had adult mentors, too, to keep watch over them. With the loss of Jay, the entire caped community had not only mourned, they'd all held their partners and kids a little closer.

Lois remembered that night too well. Kal-El had come home, miserable, heartbroken, doubting everything he did and was. What good were superheroes, if kids _died_ following in their footsteps? She herself had looked in on her twins, then only thirteen years old, and been immensely glad of her dogged insistence that they not get into the caped game until they were a little older. Fifteen was too young to lose a child. Hell, any age was too young to lose a child, but fifteen was especially cruel.

At fifteen, the adult potential of both her children had been growing clearer by the day. She couldn't imagine what it would've done to her to lose either of them at that age—she'd come too close to losing Kala when she was sixteen, and it was bitter indeed. Lois knew she would've killed Lex for that, in spite of what her husband stood for, in spite of the fact that she probably would've been arrested for it.

But not Bruce. Bruce didn't kill. Bruce just became even _more_ Batman, even more the terror of the night. He broke more bones after Jay died, he frightened more crooks, he was more willing to intimidate and threaten to get information. He did everything _except_ kill them, and Kal-El had told Lois in strict confidence the reason why: Bruce believed, in his heart of hearts, that if he killed once he would never be able to stop. The no-kill rule was the only thing separating him from his own rogues' gallery. He was brutal and violent and ruthless and terrifying, but he was _not_ a murderer. That was the one line he would never, ever cross.

Lois sighed heavily, turning off her laptop before the news reports could depress her more. In spite of everything Jay had done, the _pile_ of bodies he'd left behind him, she couldn't help feeling a twinge of sympathy for him—and for Bruce. Everyone lost tonight. And her husband was out there tonight, trying to be a shoulder for Bruce to lean on, but Bruce wouldn't bend, he wouldn't lean, he'd just go on trying to be the hard-ass sonofabitch he wanted everyone to think he was. Sometimes Lois wondered if he believed his own legend just a little too much.

But he was one of Kal-El's best friends, all the same. Picking up her phone, she sent a quick text to Black Canary. _Need my help over there? I'm good at talking sense._

A few minutes later, the reply came back. _We should be good. The Princess is here managing the situation._

At that, Lois managed a smile. If Diana of Themyscira couldn't talk Bruce out of whatever state he was in, no one could.


	11. Reading Scarlet Letters

**Wow, this one ended up HUGE, but then again, we're wanted to get this chapter out there for months, so it shouldn't be a surprise. And with all the planning and plotting for the future of the series, the muse just wanted to get it all out there. I'm crossing my fingers that my characterization for Batclan isn't too far off with my consultant on them being out for the next little while. *takes a deep breath***

* * *

><p>Gotham City was in a state of shock, but that wasn't the primary objective tonight. Helena Bertinelli—better known as Huntress—kept scanning her surroundings for any sign of Red Hood. Unlike the rest, she had no personal history with him. Not so for Dick, whose taut focus was fairly scary, given how much it resembled Bruce's. That wasn't his normal method of operating; Dick was the lightest-hearted of all the Bats.<p>

Then again, the last hour or so had set the tone pretty clearly. And that tone left every Bat breathless. With the entire clan of them still reeling from the surrealness of what happened in that dirty little apartment, Helena knew nothing was or would be normal tonight. "Northeast quadrant's clear. No sign of Hood," she said into her comm.

"Northwest is clear, too," Dick said gruffly.

"Nothing on the cams, either." That wasn't Oracle's voice; Helena could tell even through the digitizer. The phrasing and cadence were different but familiar.

She watched Dick's brow furrow, the change clearly throwing him out of his thoughts. "Canary?"

"You guessed it. I'll be running the comm the rest of the night. I hate to say this, kids, but it looks like Hood got away clean."

Helena bit her lip. If Dinah was running the comm, then Babs was worse off than she was letting on. Then again, Babs had known Jay when he was Robin. So had Dick. It looked like Hood had scored the direct hit he was looking for, even if it hadn't been with a bullet. It was beginning to feel as though Dinah and Helena herself were the only fully functioning capes in Gotham tonight.

"I'll find him." That was Bruce, his voice even harsher than usual. Helena almost flinched from it grating against her ear. He had just dropped the Joker into police custody, and returned to the scene in Crime Alley.

Dinah didn't quite stifle her sigh. "Probably not a good idea, B. A building just blew up around you. Maybe a trip to medical?"

"I'm fine. We have work to do," was the gruff response.

A pause, and Dinah said, "Have it your way. Wing, Huntress, I need you both. We've got a turf war between whatever's left of Mask's people and some of Hood's over at 54th and Kane. And a riot about to start outside the Geraldi Arms complex three blocks from the blast."

Helena tapped her comm. "I'll take the riot."

"I'll take the gangs." Dick's voice was somewhere between angry and disgusted; Helena could guess why. All this was breaking out, and Bruce was going to ignore it and hunt for someone they hadn't been able to track at all so far. But then, Bruce had reason to be obsessed. Shaking her head, Helena headed toward the apartments.

The riot wasn't much—a large group of residents from several apartment buildings had come outside after the explosion, maybe fearing their buildings were next—or maybe just wanting to watch the show. The reason didn't matter; large groups of people were basically riots waiting to happen, and something had touched off a spark there. Luckily it hadn't progressed much when Helena arrived to break it up, just a few smaller squabbles here and there, mostly fists and a few knives. No one had broken out guns yet, and the majority of people were still bystanders. All Helena had to do was knock down a couple of brawlers, pitch a few smoke bombs, and the crowd lost its taste for trouble fairly quickly.

With that handled, she headed back up to the rooftops and dropped in on Dick. The gangsters didn't seem all that committed to their fight, either, and were quickly dispatched. Helena and Dick regrouped and surveyed the scene below. "Gonna be one helluva night," Dick murmured.

"You all right?" Helena asked.

He turned to her, and even through the domino's lenses she felt the weight of his stare. What he said next took her by surprise, despite the current situation. "No, Hel, I'm not all right. That's my little brother out there somewhere, maybe buried in rubble, maybe bleeding to death—or maybe he did get away, and he'll come back again for revenge. That was my little brother who put my other little brother in the hospital a few weeks ago, and he tried to kill B tonight. Tried to kill 'Dad'. And this is the brother I thought was dead, the one I mourned. The one I cried my eyes out over because I couldn't save him. So no, I'm not even in the same zip code as all right."

Helena blinked. Dick wasn't a locked door like the others, but he generally wasn't that forthcoming with what he was thinking; she'd touched a nerve, and she'd meant to. He was being a little too Bruce, a little too locked down, and someone had to let off some of the pressure before he exploded. She didn't mind being vented on. She just hadn't expected him to be _this_ off-kilter. He'd just used her real name while they were in costume, and that spoke volumes.

"I'm gonna _be_ all right, though," he said, his voice low and determined. "Because _he_ isn't. And tonight it looks like it's just you and me and Canary who have our heads screwed on right in this town. I just hope Robin doesn't decide to come home early."

Dinah piped up in their comms. "He won't. Robin's under protective custody, and it's the super-powered kind. Spoiler's with him too. And Oracle called in some backup for you guys tonight."

"What kind of backup?" Helena asked.

"Look up," came a new voice, and they both did, Helena's hand dropping to her crossbow, and Dick's grip on his escrima sticks tightening.

Helena relaxed immediately at the sight of the rippling red cape. "Superman," she said, and he landed gently beside them.

"Huntress," he replied with a nod. "Nightwing, if Red Hood is still in the city, we'll find him. And get him some help."

"I think it's going to be more complicated than that," Dick muttered. "And Batman needs a little help, too."

Clark smiled. "Don't worry there. We already have that under control. When Canary made the call, Wonder Woman immediately insisted on dealing with _him _herself."

The comm crackled, and Helena grinned. "I've got this," she said, before Dinah even started speaking. If anyone could set Dick back on an even keel, it was Big Blue himself.

….

Batman was virtually impossible to sneak up on … unless you owned an invisible jet. He was also very difficult to _find_ when he didn't want to be found, but as in all things, there were ways around that. "What do you have for me, Chairwoman?" Diana said into her comm.

Oracle oversaw the JLA's communications network as well as Batclan's, so it was very easy for Black Canary to patch into Diana's comm unit from her seat at Oracle's computer hub. Lucky, that, and even luckier that Dinah was motivated to help. "Give me just a moment, I'm trying to find the tracking signals for the comms… Hold on, Wondy."

The nickname, which only Dinah dared say to her directly even though she was well aware most of them used it behind her back, gave Wonder Woman a fleeting and badly-needed smile. And then Dinah came back on the line a moment later. "Thanks, Oracle—yeah, that'll be faster. Okay, the tracking information should be uploading to your jet's computer right now."

Ah, the perks of having an exceedingly tech-savvy individual on the team. "Thank you both. How is Oracle faring?"

A sigh. "Better than expected, considering. Worrying about me destroying her system is a fairly effective distraction. If I notice her getting _too_ caught up, I'll just ask what 'reformat C' means."

Even Diana heard the growled, "Not funny," from somewhere near Dinah's microphone. She left them to sort it out; everyone affected by this had someone to keep watch over them, regardless of their possible reluctance. Barbara had Dinah with her in Clock Tower, Clark had gone to check on Dick, Tim and Stephanie were being watched over by Jason and Cassie in their exile at Titans Tower, and Bruce had her.

Whether he liked it or not.

With the feed from his comm pinpointing his location, Diana was able to park the jet right over him. She simply stepped out, her enhanced senses picking out movement no human would ever hear.

And yet, even though she didn't touch the ground or make any other sound, he still turned around before she reached him. "I don't recall asking for your help," he growled. "Or authorizing anyone else in my city."

Diana sighed, taking a moment to restrain her temper before responding. Why had she come to Man's World, again? And why, by all the gods, did she get herself involved with one of the most frustrating men alive? It couldn't just be the challenge.

Of course, she knew why. She'd strongly disliked Bruce when they first met: he was autocratic, abrasive, and arrogant. It didn't help that he'd kissed her when she wasn't expecting it; Diana wasn't particularly fond of being manhandled at the best of times, and at that moment she had still been somewhat out-of-sorts.

And yet, he was one of _Clark's_ best friends. The only reason she'd given Bruce a second look was curiosity, wondering what someone like Clark saw in him. Eventually she'd seen where that terrible resolve came from. Everything Bruce did, everything he was, came from that one awful moment in his life, and his determination not to let it happen to anyone else. Of course he couldn't stop _every_ crime in the city, but he could damned well _try_. That unwavering purpose was what his rogues' gallery feared most about him.

"Nor would you, truth be told. And you don't have to ask for my help," she told him, deliberately pitching her voice low and calm. "This is what partners do."

His eyes behind the cowl were unreadable, cold and hard. "I thought I was clear. My Robin, my failure, my problem, my fault. No one else's."

Diana bit her tongue to keep from saying, _Do you ever wonder if maybe that's why you're always alone in the end? Because you won't __**let**__ anyone else in?_ Instead she responded, "We share our burdens. That's what the League is for. Didn't you tell Superman the same thing in Nevada?"

"Nevada was different," Bruce said, and turned to walk away.

Diana followed. "Not so different. Both times a lost child went astray. We both helped him, even though he didn't want us to. You were the one who went behind his back and organized the search. You were the one who had League members on the ground in Nevada ten minutes after he and the kids got out of that lab."

He turned on her again, a threatening shadow-shape looming out of the dark. "You don't know Jason. I do. I can find him."

"I can _help_ you," Diana said, some of her frustration showing in her tone.

"No, you can't. You've got that fancy jet and you don't even know he was taken out of here in a helicopter," Bruce growled.

"So you _do_ have a lead," Diana replied. "Fine, get in the jet and we'll track the copter."

"I've got the Batwing."

"The jet's _invisible_."

"This helicopter isn't traceable by any ordinary means. I've lost visual, and we're wasting time arguing that could be used to try picking it up again."

"So stop arguing and get in the jet already." She crossed her arms and stared at him, and he stared back at her, momentarily stymied. Her jet _was_ the most logical use of resources at the moment. The fact that he coveted it, and didn't want to accept help, didn't change that.

While Bruce paused in a rare moment of indecision, Diana decided to break out the heavy artillery. "And if we do find him, if we do capture him, what are you going to do? Ground him? Take away his allowance?"

He sneered viciously. "Bring him to Arkham for evaluation. Just like any other criminal whose motives suggest psychological issues."

"His _motives_ suggest revenge," Diana said, her temper fraying.

"_Something_ happened to him. He's alive and relatively unscarred when all the evidence we saw at the site of the explosion suggested that there weren't enough of his remains left intact to even attempt an autopsy. Either his death was faked—by whom, and for what purpose, we still need to find out—or something happened afterward. Either way, I need to know." Bruce's voice was even more grating than usual, his grief coming out as wrath.

"Bruce, listen," Diana began, and he cut her off.

"No real names in the field, _Princess_," he snarled.

That was the moment when she lost her temper, and her own voice had an edge he rarely heard. "Stop all of this deflecting; there's no one to hear us, anyway. _Listen to me_. Your _son_ has come back from the dead, apparently wanting to kill you, or at least force you to kill your nemesis. You shouldn't be on the street right now. You can't possibly be functioning at peak condition."

He smiled, more a baring of teeth than anything else. "Oracle is being awfully free with information, I see."

One more moment, and she was going to just grab him and shake him until his teeth rattled. Amazingly, his tenacity was one of the things she _liked_ about him. Most of the time. "Let it go, Bruce. You need to deal with this. Let me help you."

Bruce scoffed, his voice scornful and full of pain he probably didn't realize showed so well. "Don't tell me what I need to do, Princess of Themyscira."

"Stop it. Just _stop it_, Bruce. No amount of self-recrimination will change things. Neither will attacking your friends." As furious as he was making her—which had to be at least half intentional—her heart still broke for him. Clark had biological children, Bruce had adopted children whom he tended to treat more like soldiers than kids, and Diana herself had sisters. She'd longed for a child of her own, sometimes, but her life was too full at the moment. Diana could imagine how much pain Bruce was in at the moment, but knew her projection had to fall short. There was no grief like the loss of a child, and Bruce had never properly allowed himself to deal with that. Now Jason was back, full of savage hatred, and then gone again, leaving all in ashes a second time.

"I've had enough of this. We're wasting time. And you're not my therapist." Bruce turned to leave again.

He'd slept with his therapist, too, as Diana recalled. Even more tactics of avoidance. "No, you're not going to walk away from this and bury it with all the other things you refuse to deal with," she warned, one hand dropping to the lasso on her hip.

Bruce looked over his shoulder, his stance changing. He'd been defensive before; now he was furious. "Use that, Amazon, and it's over," he promised.

Her retort was swift and final. "So be it, _Batman_. I care more for you than I do for this relationship."

They didn't actually talk about their relationship all that often. She had known he was attracted to her almost from the moment they met, but then, Bruce was attracted to many women. The actual relationship had been an on-again, off-again thing for the past three years. He frustrated her to no end, but something about him kept drawing her back. Maybe compassion of the man she saw before her. Maybe it was his fractured soul, that Diana couldn't help wanting to heal.

Bruce didn't _want_ healing, though. His scars, physical and otherwise, made him who he was, and he could never stop being the Bat. Now he glared at her, and she could picture his eyes narrowing behind the lenses of his cowl. "You're not the only one whose resolve is legendary, Bruce. Come with me. Let Jason go, for now. This is _his_ city, too—he'll be back, and you can deal with him when your mind and heart are better suited to the task. Spend this time with your family. They need you. And let your friends help you. You won't admit it, but you need us. Especially when you've been practically _blown up_ in addition to everything else."

Still he hesitated, and then a bitter smile hardened his mouth. "Or else you'll hogtie me and drag me in, is that right?"

"Exactly. And don't bother dropping a smoke pellet, I'll just track you down again. I didn't come here to play hide and seek all night."

He moved toward her then, and caught the lasso that was already in her hand. "Then why did you come?" Bruce growled.

The weight of the question traveled up the golden rope. Using her own weapon against her; so very Bruce of him. But she wouldn't have tried to lie anyway. "Because I care about you, you foolish, stubborn _man_," Diana snapped, making the last word an epithet. "We're all worried about you. Clark and I know you're acting like this because you love your son and it's killing you to see him so. Now come in, or one of us will drag you in."

With that she neatly flipped the coils of the lasso around his wrist. Not quite enough to bind him, not yet, but the threat was there. His shoulders tensed; at that moment, with the lasso around his arm, Bruce couldn't lie or dodge the truth. He could have kept silent, but chose not to. "He was my son. I loved him, and I failed him. I failed him from the beginning. He should never have been Robin. I should never have let my needs outweigh his. All of this, everyone who died, is my fault."

Diana didn't know the whole story, but from what she'd picked up from Clark and Babs via Dinah, it wasn't that Jay should never have been Robin. It was that he should've had a year's worth of therapy first, actually doing something about his anger instead of just channeling it into making him a replacement for Dick.

She sighed, and touched his cheek gently. "We all make choices, Bruce. You did, and he did. Some of those were mistakes. You can't change the past, you can't always predict the future, and scourging yourself with guilt accomplishes nothing."

He knew she was right, but even then, Bruce couldn't say it. All he could say, in the most hollow of voices, was, "Let's go home."

Diana smiled sadly. "Let's."

…

Dick could remember being fourteen or fifteen, being Robin: bright uniform, bad puns, bold attitude. Most of the time, it had been _fun_, a thrill that called to his high-flying soul. The leaps, the acrobatics, the danger, the daring, he'd loved it all.

He had idolized Bruce, of course. All of them did. The Batman, who knew everything about everything, who appeared and disappeared from the shadows as if by magic, who lived by a stringent code of ethics that was the only thing separating him from his terror-inducing villains. It was even in his name: Clark was Superman, Diana was Wonder Woman, but Bruce was often referred to as _the_ Batman.

The thing was, once Dick had lived with and trained with and worked with Bruce, he started to know the real man behind the legend. And that man was stern, uncompromising, brutally fair, light on praise and heavy on training. He loved his boys, but he often didn't show it very well. Dick suspected that Bruce feared showing them too much affection; the world was hard and cruel, especially for them, and he wouldn't want to create any chinks in their mental armor.

Clark was a different creature entirely. Just as idolized as Batman, but for other reasons. His amazing powers, his stunning deeds, and most of all, his unexpected niceness. Superman was humble, always glad to extend credit to the police and fire crews. He was universally kind to civilians, and as much adored as Bruce was feared by the general populace. Bright and shiny, it was little surprise to those who knew him that the Kryptonian had the most 'normal' life of any superhero.

Dick looked up to him as well. He'd been a fan of Big Blue even while he was in training with the Bat, and the occasions when he'd met Clark as a kid had been etched in his memory. So much so that his current codename was taken from Kryptonian myth. The funny thing was, even though he he'd worked with Clark and knew him fairly well now, had met his kids and his wife a few times, something about the man just turned everyone into a starry-eyed fanboy.

And now, when the world seemed to be falling down all around them, here was one of his childhood idols putting a warm hand on his shoulder and telling him it would be okay. "It isn't your fault, Nightwing," he said.

"Yeah, it kind of is," Dick said dismally. "All of this goes back to B and how he never really got Jay. He was always trying to make him into _me_. And Jay's a totally different person, he comes from almost a different world, and he needed different things. I saw this coming, I saw them having trouble, all the arguments, but I didn't fight hard enough for Jay."

He sighed. "I would've taken him, you know. Made him my sidekick. Jay always needed approval, and B couldn't give that. I could've. But B wouldn't let me. Sometimes I wonder, if I'd fought harder, if I'd gotten him, maybe he wouldn't have been so desperate to find his mom, maybe he would've never been in that warehouse in the first place…."

"Stop this, Nightwing." Clark tugged at his shoulder, making the younger man face him. "What happened tonight wasn't your fault. You couldn't have possibly predicted everything that happened, and even if you could've, there's no guarantee you could've stopped it from happening. Stop blaming yourself."

"Then who am I supposed to blame? Jay? He was always kind of wild; he always had some anger issues. B tried to channel that. Maybe we should've tried another way, but Batman needed a Robin and I'd checked out." Honestly he was furious with Jay for everything he'd done, most especially for hurting Tim, but Dick couldn't help the fact that his anger was tempered by grief. And even pity.

"Everyone has to grow up and find their own path. Even and especially our kids. You're a man now; it's unreasonable to expect you'd stay the _Boy_ Wonder forever." Clark smiled sadly. This had to be bittersweet for him, with both of his own children about to leave their teens.

Dick lowered his head with a deep sigh. "I just don't know what to do. We thought he was _dead_."

Clark put an arm around his shoulders and hugged him. "What we always do. Fix what we can. Deal with the situation at hand. Plan for the future. Learn from the past, but don't dwell on it. And have hope, Nightwing."

This was hell, remembering the kid Jay was while trying not to hate the man he'd become. There was something wrong, something fractured in his psyche; this was more than just revenge. Dick couldn't do more, at that moment, than to return the hug. If Bruce stood for justice, and Diana for truth, then Clark was the living symbol of hope. And Dick definitely needed a dose of that at the moment.

…

The hour was late, the latest of the concerts over for the evening, and Kala was happily snuggled into Dustin's arms. Lately she'd found herself pretty worn out after a performance, feeling a little off-balance for some reason. Dustin was getting pretty good at re-grounding her. "So you like Denver?" she asked.

He shrugged. "It's got nice views. We haven't really seen much of it, though."

That brought on a chuckle as she grinned tiredly up at him. "We never do, honestly. That's life on the road—I think I've stayed in half the Holiday Inns in the country, but I almost never have time to explore, especially now that we're doing these structured tours. It was a little different when it was just the three of us and the van. There's so much I wish I could see. I always end up rehearsing in the afternoon, singing at night, and sleeping all morning."

"It's pretty hectic," he remarked, and nuzzled her hair. "Luckily the view in here is just as good as the one out there."

Kala laughed. "You sure know how to flatter a girl. I just took my makeup off and I'm wearing one of your t-shirts. I'm sure I'm the height of _stunning_."

Dustin tipped her head back and kissed her cheek. "You are."

That made her smile, warm as sunlight. Dustin really was just about the perfect guy, and she was incredibly glad to have him with her. She'd been even more on edge than normal all night, just antsy and irritable and out-of-sorts, but all of that tension had bled off after she got back to her hotel room with Dustin.

And then her phone chirped. Kala groaned and grabbed it off the nightstand, eyes rolling before seeing the message was from Jase. A frown crossed her face, especially since they had just talked the other day. What it said made her hair stand up, even without knowing the actual tone of the words. _Need to see you soon as you can._

_Something's wrong. Very wrong._ Another chill down her spine. Her first reaction was to focus her hearing around his heartbeat. Quiet, except for ragged breathing: someone else's, sounding pained, not threatening. Quickly, Kala texted back: _What's going on?_ _You okay?_ At the same time she told Dustin, "It's Jason."

"Is he all right?" he asked.

"Not sure," she replied, and the reply came in just as she finished speaking. _After-school club issues. I need a hug._ Kala sighed, biting her lip. She should have guessed; the creepy anxious feeling was back, and she knew he wouldn't text if it was as simple as it sounded. It had to be something within the capes and something that had him in knots for this to be happening. She had to get out there, if only for a few minutes. _Give me ten and I'll be there. Excuses to make. Love you__._

"Not good, huh?" Dustin said, watching her face.

Moments like this always gave her a moment's pause over the choices she was making in her life and made her wonder for the thousandth time how Dad had done this for several years without anyone knowing. She respected him even more every time. "Something ungood in real life. I really hate to do this, but I really need to talk to him. Dustin…" Kala trailed off, trying to think of what excuse she could make, making it clear that she was reluctant to leave.

Thankfully he had had quite a few years of dealing with their closeness and let her go willingly and with that little of an explanation. "Privately, twin to twin. I get it, Kal." He smiled and pulled her in for a kiss. "I can go hang out in the hotel lobby."

"No, honey, you're already comfortable. I'll just throw some clothes on and take this call in the tour bus. It shouldn't be long." Kala kissed him again, lingering to steal a bit more warmth and comfort.

"Take all the time you need. And tell him I'll call him tomorrow and see if he's okay. And he'd better make it out to Kansas on school break."

"I will. Promise. Love you." With that, Kala slid out of bed to grab a pair of jeans and hurry into her boots, waving as she stepped out of the door. As soon as she closed the door behind her, she was down the hallway faster than the eye could see and in the air seconds after, immediately regretting that she hadn't tied back her hair.

She was on the roof of Titans Tower even before Jason could send another message, where a weary and miserable twin awaited her. She knew that look on his face, hating it before she even knew what brought it on. It was the haunted look of the aftermath of their childhood nightmares, a look they had seen in each other's eyes many times. Without a word, Kala came straight forward and he enfolded her into a long hug.

These days Jason didn't scare easy, so whatever had happened really had to have unnerved him. And it rattled her to see him so intense. As much as she loved her life, as much she had wanted the singer's gypsy life if she couldn't trust herself to have her birthright, she hated the distance that yawned between them these days, both literally and figuratively. "Hey, it's okay, Lizardboy. See, I'm here and with that special delivery hug you wanted, all the way from Colorado," she murmured against his shoulder, hugging him a little tighter. "Jase, what happened? What's got you so freaked out?"

"You haven't seen the news?" he asked, still holding on tight, sounding exactly like he looked when she had touched down.

Kala shook her head before leaning back to look him in the eyes. Now she really was worried. "Not in the last three hours. Tonight was a work night in Denver. I've been in rehearsal for most of the day and onstage until about an hour ago. So tell me what going on, Jase, okay? 'Cause you're starting to really scare me."

The look on his face told her she wasn't going to like the answer.

…

Once Tim and Steph were huddled together in his quarters, both still tied up in knots over what had played out on that feed from Gotham when they were exiled so far from home but at least together —still under Cassie's watchful eye as she sat at Comm monitoring the situation for them with Dinah—there was something Jason had to do. He had wanted to call her, but felt too twisted up to even manage the words if he spoke to her. There was nothing more he could do without breaking than pace the roof of Titans Tower until she landed, coming all the way out here the way he knew she would, and then he swept Kala into a hug. He had to clench his jaw to keep from bawling like a kid, Tim's words from earlier striking deep, deeper than he'd acknowledged in a long time. Seeing her soothed the memory that had been called up: his twin sister's quirky grin, the candy scent of her shampoo, and the sound of her voice all the opposite of the one fear that hadn't left him since all this began.

Tim had been understandably upset, and he'd vented to Jason. The Bats were notorious for their secrets and their clannishness, but there were even secrets amongst them, as he had learned over the years he and Tim had been good friends. Fears they never even shared with each other. Jason had the feeling that he was the first to hear a lot of what he had tonight when he'd separated the two of them from the girls, so much confusion in the usually stoic Red Robin, so much pain and anger and hurt bound uneasily together. Red Hood had quite literally turned Tim's world upside down and he was struggling not to lose control.

And there was absolutely nothing right now that Jason could do beyond listen. But the only part that had truly scared him had been when Tim, his voice breaking, had snarled, "He should've been my brother! I admired him, you know that? When he was Robin, I admired him just like I admired Dick! I wanted to be his friend; I could've been his brother. We could've _helped_ him, but he comes back and tries to kill me and burns down my city and tries to kill _Bruce_…!"

That had chilled Jason's blood. He remembered catching sight of Kala in Nevada, of seeing a stranger behind his twin's eyes. He remembered seeing her come into the fight—on _Zod's_ side, shouting at their dad to leave him alone. Fighting _him_, though she'd snapped out of it enough to save him.

Enough to save them all, but very nearly at the cost of her own life. Tim had no idea how much he'd affected Jason; at the moment he'd needed a shoulder to lean on, and Jason had been that, not showing how much Tim's tirade had rocked him. After, though, he needed to see his sister. He needed to remind himself that she was weird and goofy and funny and so full of herself she was about to burst at the seams; that she was okay, she hadn't gone dark on them, she'd always be there for him.

The hug helped. Kala was real, she was safe, and she was _here_, right where she belonged. Of course, she had no idea, so Jason had to fill her in on the things she'd missed. Not all of them, of course. An overview was fine, but Kala didn't need all the painful details of how badly this had hurt everyone. That Red Hood had been the second Robin was a shocking enough piece of info for someone not actively part of the cape and cowl crowd to know.

"…and from what I heard last, he got away somehow," Jason finished. "Dad and Diana are out there trying to scour the city and talk some sense into Uncle Bruce. Tim and Steph are here. Everyone's just played out."

Kala looked guilty at that, what she was thinking about all too obvious in her brother's eyes, and Jason gave her a tiny shake. "Don't even think about it, Kal. You didn't know. Plus Gotham has been completely locked down. You couldn't have gotten in to help even if you did. You can't feel guilty when you have a real life out there and none of us told you. Kala, there's nothing you could have done. Period."

Her lower lip pouted stubbornly. "I could have done something. Tim's my friend, too, remember? Uncle Bruce was the main one helping the family … back then." Jason saw the cloud that passed over her face, both of them thinking of the same day three years ago for a moment, a day that they barely talked about. "I owe them, and Diana, for helping me back then. You and Dad should have called me. I was singing earlier, and then I was just relaxing in my hotel room, and there's this huge crisis going down with you guys while I'm eating popcorn in bed with Dustin…."

"Kal, stop it. We said I'd hit the caped scene first so no one suspects we're twins."

"We both know that's not why it's like this, Jase. I told you to do it for a reason and we both know you were the better choice for the Mission. It doesn't mean I don't feel responsible, too," she interrupted with a sad smile, one that broke his heart. Kala was right; they both knew who had been the better student for Jor-El, the one that could still quote half the teachings they had learned verbatim. Kala had been the front-runner for the legacy despite Jor-El's protestations, the one who was the most well-versed, but nothing had been the same after those days after New Years' in Nevada. Since then, Kala had barely visited the Fortress and had made a decision to follow a completely different path, a slightly more mundane path.

He sighed and leaned his forehead against hers. "You're right, it's not the reason why. But that's what I tell people because you're full of it about not being right for the family legacy. Kala, I _know_ you're one of the good guys, no matter what you're scared of. That's not all you are. I also know you've got to do this in your own time and in your own way. I know you'll do it because it's part of who you are. And until you do, it's not fair to expect you to hold _my_ hand all the time. If you ever come into this, it'll be as the hero you are in your own right, not as my _sidekick_."

Jason saw her open her mouth to protest, already shaking her head. He caught her chin then, making her look him in the eyes. She couldn't keep blaming herself for what she saw in herself as ultimate darkness and betrayal; none of it had been her fault. "Don't even bother to say it. I know what I know and I know you better than anyone on this planet. You will be here with me someday. I know it, you know it. Because you're my sister and you _are_ a hero, Kala. No matter what you think you did that day, whatever you think you did wrong, it was _you_ that saved us. The entire planet, even, if Zod had been able to go forward with his plans. _You_ did it. So stop doing this to yourself, okay? I believe in you."

She had started crying half-way through his speech, but his sister stayed silent. And then Kala moved back forward and hugged him tight, her eyes shut and moisture dampening the shoulder of his suit. Jason returned it just as tight. "Maybe … maybe one day. I'm sorry it's like this. I'm sorry I'm like this."

Jason hugged her back. "Don't be. You're the best twin sister a half-alien teenage superhero could ask for."

That, finally, got a weak chuckle out of her. "And you're biggest dork of a twin brother that a rockstar could want."

A beat of silence as they held each other, comfortable in their togetherness. "I miss you like hell," Kala finally said.

"Me, too," Jason admitted. That was all that needed to be said between them—the rest was understood. Life might be taking them down different roads, but as long as one of them could fly at supersonic speeds, they'd never really be too far apart.

…

Jason Todd—former Robin, current Red Hood—was trapped in a nightmare. For him, despair had a distinctive sound, the cruel declarative _thwang!CRUNCH_ of metal meeting bone. He'd survived that, traversed so many unsuspected levels of pain to a place of weary numbness, and everything _before_ that, only to end up _here_. Broken, beaten, bloody, and so very lost.

Again.

He couldn't remember how he'd wound up like this again. The world was vague and distant. All that existed was the splitting headache (_crowbar to the skull_) pounding at his brain, and the salt-and-iron taste of blood (_failure_) in his mouth. Jay drifted in and out of consciousness, haunted by ghosts and the knowledge that he wasn't, hadn't been, would never be, good enough.

Sometime later, as he was floating toward wakefulness again, something _real_ entered his awareness: a hand at his neck. Jay reacted instantly, instinct and training honed to deadly efficiency. One hand under the pillow his head rested on, finding his gun and bringing it out. The other shot out to grab his assailant, catching a fistful of cloth, and he had the muzzle of the gun socked into the hollow of his attacker's throat before he even opened his eyes. When he did so, his vision wavered, and he blinked and shook his head, trying to clear it.

"Jason. This is quite unnecessary." He knew that voice; it was a voice he trusted, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Still, his hands tightened on the shirt … and the trigger. The hand at his throat had never moved.

His eyes finally focused, revealing a well-known face and eyes that held not a trace of fear. _Talia al Ghul._ She looked at him patiently, waiting for him to withdraw the gun, her fingertips still on his pulse.

He felt … like seventeen kinds of shit, honestly. Eyes gritty, muscles aching, head throbbing, throat parched. "_You_," he growled.

"Of course, dearest. Lie back and rest, for now. You've lost a great deal of blood, and sudden movement must be making it worse." Her cool fingers skimmed his brow. She still hadn't said word one about the damn loaded gun at her throat, and honestly he was starting to feel like an ass for holding it on her.

Memory was coming back, in fits and starts. The final confrontation—all three of them—that insane laugh, the one he heard even in silence—Bruce walking away, fucking _walking away_ like it was nothing, like _he_ was nothing, and then….

Jay let go of Talia, his hand flying to his neck, and he winced at the fresh ache there. "Sonofabitch. Fucking batarang to the jugular." No wonder he felt like shit. He must've lost a ton of blood. Jay vaguely remembered slapping a military-grade wound sealing patch on his neck and staggering out after the big bang, but then … nothing.

He let the gun drop beside him, letting his eyes fall shut. "So what happened?" he asked hoarsely. "And how'd I get here?"

Talia clicked her tongue softly. "I've been keeping watch, but I was not an eyewitness to every moment of it. From what I did see, someone detonated a completely unnecessary amount of C4, and yet you escaped the blast more or less intact. You made it into the next building before you collapsed from blood loss and shock. I picked you up from there, and brought you here to recuperate."

"So where's _here_, T?" Every time he blinked, it felt like his eyeballs were grating in their sockets.

"My safehouse. London. You've been unconscious for almost two days." He could hear her moving something around to one side of him, and then blessed coolness started running down his arm. An IV, he realized, and she'd just hung a new bag of fluids. Nothing you'd find in a hospital, knowing Talia, but he wasn't worried about poison. Or sedatives, for that matter.

Jay had bigger things in mind. "What about _him_? And the fucking clown?"

She hesitated, and Jay opened one eye to glare at her. He tilted the gun up, not quite a threat, just a reminder that he had it. She looked disappointed, but he didn't care. At last she sighed. "The Detective lives, of course. As for the Joker … you will learn this eventually. He is back in Arkham. In a full-body cast."

_Bruce won._ Batman won. All that planning, all that time, all that effort … and the fucker _still_ won. Jay didn't realize he'd snarled it aloud until Talia caught his chin and made him look at her. "He didn't win, Jason."

"Oh yeah? This was supposed to end with Joker dead, or me dead. And if all else failed, with all three of us dead. That goddamn pointy-eared bastard managed to work it out _his_ way. His fucking stupid, blind, holier-than-thou way!" Shouting made his throat even rawer, and Jay winced.

"We've both underestimated his resolve," Talia said quietly. "He will _not_ kill. Not for me, not for you, not for my father, not for himself. It is the one line he will not cross. The line _you_ crossed, and showed him what he is and what he could have been, had he been less fearful of taking that final step. _You_ won, Jason."

"Funny, I don't feel like I won a goddamn thing," he muttered, finally lying back down, but keeping the gun close at hand. Talia stroked his sweat-matted hair off his forehead, and he sighed. Despair was starting to overtake anger. What had made him think, even with everything he knew, that he could control _Bruce_? That he could force Bruce into choosing between a son—no, a _soldier_—and a psychotic? "I should've just offed them both."

"Would it have given you peace to have them lying dead at your feet?" Talia asked, her voice neutral.

"Probably not. Besides, you'd do me in for killing your 'beloved'." He couldn't help the sneer at the end. Jay knew—or thought he did—where her loyalties lay, regardless of who Talia herself happened to be laying at the time.

He heard her take a breath. "Jason. Murder does not confer peace. That is something I learned a very long time ago, and it was a hard lesson. Killing either of them would not silence your nightmares or soothe your soul."

He laughed bitterly. "Oh shit, the _assassin_—the one who _trained_ me to kill—is telling me not to kill people. What the fuck has the world come to?"

Unperturbed, she answered, "Vengeance, now, that is another matter. And vengeance is yours. You brought him to his knees, Jason. You wounded him as no other has or could. The son he mourned is now his foe—and it is _his_ fault. Better to let him live with that, than to grant him the oblivion of death."

That, finally, brought him a small measure of relief for the burning ache in his chest, and Jay even managed a lopsided smile. "You're one vindictive woman, Talia."

"Quite." With that she leaned in and kissed his temple, her long hair brushing his cheek. "Sleep, dearest. Sleep and heal."

Even as he let himself drift toward hopefully-dreamless slumber, Jay knew he wouldn't—couldn't—stay here for long.


	12. Turning Circles

**Another in just before zero hour. I am going to hit that bed so hard when I get these posted. ;) As the plots start to make themselves known and the story starts to gain a little momentum. A few hints for the future in this one, as well as an appearance of a famous...well, I don't know that I'd call him a villain, per se. Enjoy, all!**

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><p>Lex Luthor lifted his chin and held still while Mercy straightened his tie. Fifteen minutes to show time, a new group of investors to impress, and silly details like the tie did actually count. Even if his mind was on far more complicated matters. "What's our current status across the board?" he asked.<p>

"Across the board?" Mercy repeated, faintly scoffing. That was a great deal of information, but he knew she had it at her fingertips. "L-Tech stock is holding steady, but Wayne Enterprises has unveiled a new chip that's eight percent faster than ours. It's differentiated enough that we shouldn't even bother suing for patent infringement or trying to prove industrial espionage."

"We couldn't, in any case, since the technology is Kryptonian. Much as I'd love to see the Boy Scout in court trying to explain why he's had this tech for years and hasn't bothered to share it. The solar power applications _alone_…" Luthor shook his head with a sigh, checking his cuffs.

Mercy lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "We knew we couldn't maintain an exclusive monopoly on the crystal technology forever. We have a competitive advantage in the market, at least for a little while longer."

"True," Luthor remarked. "And the rest of our current business?"

No need to check notes. Mercy's memory was keen. "Project Scion is coming along nicely. At 28 months into the project, language and mathematic metrics are above projected values. So far the reproduction of Kryptonese is imperfect, but that is to be expected at this early stage. Time will allow for improvement."

"We must be careful," Lex warned. "There _is_ such a thing as too much progress, after all. I will not have the perfect specimen flawed by too much experimentation."

"The scientists have been cautioned," Mercy answered with a faint smile. "No instabilities noted yet. Everything is proceeding at or ahead of schedule. Besides, in time _this_ experiment will have its own self-defense capabilities online. To that end, Lex, you might want to spend some time in the east wing this evening. Better to familiarize yourself with this one."

"Of course," he replied. This had been the single success out of dozens of attempts, and Luthor would not allow anything to jeopardize it. The rest had all been destroyed, unfit for the purpose, and the sole remainder was as precious to him as anything. Hopefully it would know that; the very _worst_ outcome was this one turning on its creator.

Mercy continued, "Project Uplift continues to encounter problems. The serum provides the expected benefits, but within a day the subject's immune system begins to reject it. So far we've lost all the test subjects. One was kept alive in a medically-induced coma with heavy doses of steroids, but even it eventually expired."

That provoked a scowl. Luthor didn't like to take bad news standing still, so he started walking toward the conference room, Mercy at his side as always. "What about the gene therapy application?"

"Also failed. Inserting the genes, even at the embryonic stage, tends to cause unforeseen mutations. We're going to try a new virus vector on the stage six trials, see if we can get a more selective range of genes spliced in. Perhaps those will enable the resulting offspring to tolerate the serum." Mercy didn't sound discouraged or upset by the daunting news, but then, most of this was academic to her. It was Luthor's battle, not hers.

"Perhaps we can reconfigure the crystal matrix to do the splicing for us," Luthor mused aloud.

"It's a possibility. We need better access to encoded data, however. Hence, Project Scion." She paused, and went on in a slightly different tone, "Speaking of our … challenges, Project Replica has gone missing again."

"Has he now? Good luck to him." Luthor couldn't help chuckling. An early attempt at cloning Superman, the result was … bizarre, at best. The beast was normally kept securely contained in an Antarctic facility Luthor owned, which masqueraded as a research station. It actually did accomplish some research, but nothing of interest to Luthor was ever published. The cold and dark kept the cloned creature in a state of hibernation, but it had escaped before. It was not a critical asset, however, and Luthor could look forward to the discomfiture its existence would cause his nemesis.

Just in case the beast came hunting him—its actions were hard to predict, motivated more by whim than logic—he ought to have a line of defense ready. "How's our stockpile of K?" he asked.

"Of the first iteration, we still have three hundred pounds stored in various secure locations, no more than twenty pounds each," Mercy replied. "The successive iterations were all sold except for a reserve of a hundred pounds each. As of the fifth manufacturing run, the quality has noticeably dropped. Two hundred pounds are still unsold."

A lesser man would've gnawed at his lip. Luthor only narrowed his eyes. "Eight hundred pounds of kryptonite in varying purities. That should be enough, don't you think? And we won't dilute the sample any further. Next time we process a new batch, use the third iteration for the seed, and mix the fifth run's product into the new crystal when it goes up for sale."

Mercy nodded, making a mental note. Kryptonite wasn't yet illegal to possess, since most of the world still didn't know about its extremely limited application, but being the only person to actually _produce_ it was an advantage Luthor had no intention of giving up. There wasn't much kryptonite elsewhere in the world, and he was protective of his monopoly.

Making more was simple. It was just like the creation of New Krypton, only on a smaller scale. And, since the facility was in the middle of the most godforsaken part of the Australian outback, the electromagnetic pulse created by each run wasn't anywhere near as noticeable as the one that had briefly shut down the city of Metropolis. The only drawback so far had been the decline in quality over each success batch, as the impurities sapped the effectiveness of the pure crystal. Still, he'd kept the best of it for himself, and realized an _obscene_ profit selling the mid-grade stuff to everyone who wanted to keep Superman at bay.

Which reminded him of something. Having an abundance of kryptonite meant Luthor could offer to _give_ it away, not that doing so set easily with his principles. But he'd made a gift of it, once or twice. "Any word on our 'friends'?" Luthor asked Mercy. They were nearing the conference room where Luthor would give his presentation to the stakeholders. This was a top-secret meeting, and even so, he would not appear under his own name.

Her lip curled in an unmistakable sneer. "Last I heard Ra's al Ghul was fomenting rebellion in northern Africa. At least, our sources suggest his hand at work. You know he operates through so many layers of deception, it's nearly impossible to discern his true motives."

"I know. A man after my own heart, that one." Although the older man's caution was excessive even by Luthor's standards, if everything he claimed was true, then perhaps Ra's had earned the right to be so wary. Almost as an afterthought, he said, "And his daughter?"

"That's actually interesting. She's been out of pocket, according to our sources, for almost a week. He seems to keep her on a fairly short leash, but she hasn't been seen in his company for six days. And our eyes and ears within his organization suggest trouble between them." Mercy shrugged. "Our spies are poorly placed. We can't really trust that information is accurate, and even if we could, there's always the possibility that it's a setup of some kind, falsified for any potential watchers."

Luthor came to a complete halt, his eyes focused inward. Mercy waited for him, of course. When he spoke, his voice was low. "Our eyes in Gotham, didn't they report on this Red Hood business recently?"

"Yes. He confronted the Batman, and hasn't been seen since. Presumed killed in an explosion, but you never know with Gotham."

"When was that?"

She caught the reference immediately, nodding. "Six days ago."

Luthor grinned coldly. "The same time Ra's al Ghul's daughter jumped ship. And Batman is one of _his_ foes. I think that's no coincidence."

"You think they were funding Red Hood? Maybe he's one of their agents?" Mercy asked.

Shrugging, Luthor moved onward. "Maybe he is, and she's pretending to go off-script to keep some plausible deniability to their involvement. Maybe he wasn't, and she's recruiting him. Maybe she's playing both sides against the middle. Who can tell, with that one?"

Much to his surprise, Mercy actually gave a little shudder. Lex turned to her with a questioning look, and she gave him a taut smile. "Remember that day we spent in Nevada, hiding from the capes and cops? Remember the snake?"

The two of them wedged into a tiny cave, a breath from discovery as vigilantes and law enforcement hunted them both, with only a small supply of water and no food between them. And just to top it all off, their hiding spot was the den of a very large rattlesnake, which had slithered in to join them. The thing's head had been as big as Luthor's hand, and neither of them had dared _breathe_ deeply for eight hours while the serpent shared their space, its coils pressed tight to their warmer bodies. Oh yes, the memory of that day still lingered. "I remember," he said flatly.

"Dealing with those two reminds me of that day," Mercy said. "We're lying down with serpents, Lex. We'd best be very, very sure they don't decide to bite."

"That we should," he murmured, already thinking of the best way to defang the Head of the Demon … and his daughter.

…

After morning rounds, Kal-El flew back to the apartment in time to put coffee on and have Lois' first cup ready just as she slapped at her alarm clock. Some things changed over time, but Lois was _still_ not a morning person. She'd pawed the alarm off and started to sit up when Kal-El appeared at her side. "Good morning, beautiful," he told her.

A wordless grumble as she took the coffee and sipped it, sitting hunched up around the mug. Kal-El dropped a careful kiss on the top of her head, ignoring the growl in response, and moved the alarm clock back to its proper place. They'd had to replace several of them over the years, because Lois had either smacked them off the table or, in the case of the old-fashioned one with actual bells, outright thrown it against the wall out of frustration. Clark had found pieces of that one around the room weeks later. Hearing about the incident, Jason had said that their house was where bad alarm clocks were sentenced to die.

Kal-El had joked about buying the high-tech version that rolled itself off the table and underneath the bed when the snooze button was pressed, but the look on Lois' face had nixed that idea before he even fully voiced it. Especially when she told him in all seriousness, "I would frikkin' shoot that thing, Kal-El."

No, the best way to wake her was put coffee in front of her and then stay at a prudent distance until the caffeine percolated through. The only other method was to snuggle up tight, but that only worked when he had time to let her wake slowly. Even then, he got swatted a few times for moving or breathing too loudly.

After a few minutes, Lois' eyes actually opened, and Kal-El was ready with a bagel and a fresh cup of coffee. She smiled then, and said, "Thank you," in a sleep-rough voice.

"You're welcome." Since she was talking coherently, it was safe to sit down beside her, put his arm around her, and enjoy the warm and snuggly softness that he personally believed her grumpy demeanor was intended to hide. Lois leaned against his shoulder drowsily, demolishing the bagel and sipping the rest of the coffee.

"I know what you're doing," she informed him. Kal-El looked at her curiously, and Lois' hazel eyes had a bright spark of mischief. "You're taking advantage, Kal-El. I'm too sleepy to stop you from stealing cuddles."

"And I will steal all the cuddles I possibly can," he replied, grinning. "I haven't quite caught up to the six years I missed."

She stuck her tongue out at him. "Whatever. I'm not cute _or_ cuddly." Even as she spoke she was nuzzling into his shoulder gladly.

"Your secret is safe with me, Mad Dog Lane," Kal-El said. For a few moments they just held each other in comfortable silence. Thirteen years of marriage, and it only got sweeter with time.

After a while, though, a stray thought made Kal-El smile. "Could be worse. The twins could be home. Remember how they'd jump on you in the mornings?"

"It's a wonder they both _lived_," Lois growled. "And you didn't see them when they were _really_ little. They had a knack for waking up and wanting to be fed _right_ when it was too late for me to go back to sleep, and too freaking early for me to just get dressed and go to work."

It had always amazed Kal-El how much latitude the twins got. Lois was not known for being forgiving and tolerant; she'd broken Steve Lombard's hand when he trespassed and humiliated scores of others who had the temerity to presume upon her. Her acid tongue was legendary, especially first thing in the morning. But her children could literally _jump_ on her before coffee, and they got no more than an irritable mutter. Kal-El had occasionally come home from rounds when they were little and found both of them playing what _looked_ like touch football underneath the covers while Lois curled into a long-suffering little ball around her pillow. She never snapped at them, not even when she was in the middle of a blazing fury at someone else. The way she could switch in an instant from Mad Dog to Mama Bear never failed to amuse him … and touch his heart.

There had only ever been once when she didn't. The terrible argument between Lois and Kala on that New Year's Eve, when both of them had said things they still regretted. Lois had slapped her daughter across the face, and Kala had been perfectly ready to strike back before Kal-El stopped it. That said, it had been provoked—very strongly provoked. And no such thing had happened since.

As if she knew his thoughts, Lois murmured, "I miss them. I miss my babies … especially the bratty one, God help me. I miss Kala like wildfire. Skype and text messages just don't cut it, y'know."

"I know. I miss them both too. Especially now." He didn't have to elaborate; they both remembered last week.

"That reminds me. Did our favorite lawyer talk some sense into the billionaire? Is it even possible?" Lois looked up at him, honestly curious.

Kal-El sighed. "Bruce is…. He let Tim and Steph come home. And since Diana talked to him, he lifted the lockdown on Gotham."

"How bad's the fallout been?" Lois asked.

"Well, Bruce and Diana aren't together anymore, but give it a week or a month," he said with a little shrug. The two had broken things off at one or the other's instigation—sometimes by mutual decree—fairly frequently over the past three years. Diana _cared_ about him, though, and she always ended up mixed up in things, offering her help or just her company, and somehow they'd be back together again. Bruce, too, had shown up at Diana's side when she needed a shoulder to lean on, often claiming that Kal-El had sent him, but all of them knew better. By now Kal-El had accepted that the caring would last, even if the relationship didn't. And Bruce badly needed friends he could rely on.

"Those two…" Lois sighed. "How about the rest of Batclan?"

"Pulling together after a crisis like they always do. The kids will be fine. They're all watching each other's backs, and Dick's staying at the Manor for right now. Plus Dinah's sticking around the city for Babs." Luckily Lois was the official media liaison for the JLA, and unofficially the keeper of secrets for most of them, so he didn't have to remember to use code names.

She nodded slowly, and then asked a very journalistic question. "So where was he all this time, and who the hell supported him? You don't start a war like that without backers, financial and otherwise."

"We don't know yet," Kal-El admitted. "We don't know how he survived or where he was. As for the funding, some of the equipment he had was very close to Batclan's own gear. Bruce has an idea who might be behind that. He's not _saying_, of course, but it takes a lot of money to get into that level of tech. The usual run of Gotham villains just don't have that kind of money, and none of them would've been able to keep from gloating over having access to the gear, much less knowing anything about where Jason was."

"Yeah, those vain bastards would've shouted it from the rooftops if they knew," Lois murmured. "Frikkin' Penguin would've taken out billboards."

Kal-El sighed. "Bruce does have a nemesis with the resources and the patience to pull something like this off: Ra's al Ghul. If it was him, that might be our answer as to how Jason survived. Or came back, as the case may be."

Lois shot him a very dubious look at that. She knew a great deal, but she didn't know everything, and knowledge of the Lazarus pits was as closely guarded as Kal-El's own identity. When he didn't offer any more information, she sighed heavily and leaned against him. "I don't know how to feel, Kal-El. Part of me wanted to put a bullet in the rotten little shit for going after Bruce and putting Tim in the hospital and blowing up half of Gotham. I mean, seriously. But then most of me remembers what he went through—trying to find his mom, finding out she was working for Joker, the goddamn clown _killing _him, and then somehow he survived—and all I can think is 'that poor damn kid needs a hug'. It's not _right_. It's like some sick fucking _joke_ that he ended up this way."

Lois was a mother, always in doubt about her own maternal abilities but a great mother nonetheless. She couldn't help responding to Jason Todd's quest to find his birth mother, or reacting to him as a lost son above all else. Most of the time she was objective about heroes and villains and those who lurked between, but not in a case like this. Kal-El kissed her once, softly, and she nuzzled his cheek. They could both grieve for Red Hood, for what had happened, what he'd done, and what he'd become. "He was a good kid," Kal-El murmured, remembering how hard the second Robin had worked to try filling his predecessor's shoes.

Another long silence, in which Kal-El supposed both of them were grateful for their own children and the comparatively mild struggles they'd gone through. And then Lois tipped her head back to look up at him. "_Why_ do you guys let Bruce raise all the children, anyway?"

"He doesn't raise them _all_. Green Arrow's got … I forget how many it is now."

Lois paused, arching an eyebrow. "Him, too."

The true answer was the JLA didn't actually have oversight of its heroes. There were no Heroic Enforcement Cops who could say, 'You have too many sidekicks' or even, 'You're doing this wrong'. They were all independent operators allied by common goals. Everything had to be settled by discussion—unless someone was egregiously flouting the law or presenting a danger to the public, in which case they'd be stopped and placed under arrest like any criminal.

Kal-El knew what Lois was really talking about. Why was it that the least likely fathers among them were raising the most children? Bruce with his past certainly didn't seem like good father material, although he was devoted to his adopted children … in his own way. "I don't know, honestly," he answered.

"That ought to be you, y'know. The man with a dozen sidekicks." Lois intoned the last half of that with a fake broadcaster's voice, making Kal-El grin.

At least he could turn this from darker subjects. "So what you're telling me is, you want more kids in the house?"

Her mouth quirked up in a sarcastic smile. "Yeah, hero. Head on down to whatever sidekick supply depot Bruce uses, I hear they have a two-for-one special."

"I'll get right on that. Sorry the super-beagle project didn't work out as planned," he teased.

Unfortunately, 'beagle' was one of the words that both Bagel and Chewie knew and responded to, and as soon as he spoke the younger dog howled. Lois barely had time to swear before both of them were yipping and dancing in anticipation of their breakfast.

…

Something was up with Kala. Dustin had known that for days, ever since she'd talked to Jason. _What_ that conversation had been about, he still didn't know. He'd texted Jason asking if everything was okay, and been told that it was a college friend's brother going through some heavy stuff. Jason had just needed to hear his twin's voice.

Right. And if _that_ was the whole story, Dustin would eat his still-fairly-new cowboy hat without ketchup. Still, Jason and Kala did keep certain things just between the two of them. He would've written it off as Twin Stuff, if not for Sebast.

Dustin was well aware that Sebast was Kala's best friend. Other guys probably treated him either as a rival or someone they could ignore, but Dustin loved her, so her friends were his. No matter how jarringly out of place they were in his hometown. And Sebast was a good friend to have.

He'd come to Dustin yesterday, a shadow lurking in his eyes. "Has Kala told you what the hell has her so wound up?" he asked.

"Not yet," Dustin had replied. "You?"

Sebast had scowled. "No. One of us has to pry it out of her. It's not good for her to keep bullshit locked down like this all the time. Eventually the pressure will get too high and she'll blow up. And trust me, _mijo_, that won't be pretty."

"I'll see if I can get her to talk," Dustin had offered.

"You're the one sharing her pillow. Make with the pillow talk." That had sounded almost … jealous, and Dustin had been thoroughly perplexed.

But not as confused as he was when he finally tried to get Kala to talk to him about what was bothering her. He waited until they were comfortably in bed, snuggled close in the afterglow, no urgent plans in the morning that would make staying up to talk a bad idea. "So how's Jason's friend's brother?" he asked.

Kala's whole body tensed. "Not good," she answered in a small voice.

Dustin kissed the top of her head. Her hair always smelled like some kind of candy, a delicious scent that made him want to rub his face against her. "Is he gonna be all right?"

"No one knows. No one even knows where he _is_." Kala huddled close to his side, burrowing in for comfort.

He wasn't quite sure what to say. "What's going on, exactly?"

She'd been tense before; now Kala's shoulders were like iron cables. "I … it's not my place to talk about it. It's not Jason's, either."

"I'm not trying to be nosey," Dustin demurred, wrapping his arms around her. "I just hate seeing you upset, is all."

For a long moment, Kala was silent, just her breath warm against his neck and her arms around his chest. When she spoke again, her voice was almost too low to hear. "What's happening to him … it almost happened to me. That's why Jason's scared. He almost lost me the way T—his friend lost _his_ brother."

"What happened, Kala?" Dustin asked. He hated that lost tone in her voice. One of the many things he loved about Kala was her fire, her gutsy determination. To hear her sound broken and afraid made him want to take a tire iron and find whoever had made her feel this way.

Kala shook her head slowly. "I can't … Dustin, I can't talk about that. It was when I was kidnapped. Things happened … I can't."

Snuggling her close, trying to lend her every iota of warmth and strength and security he had, Dustin murmured, "I'm here. You're safe now. No one's gonna hurt you."

"No one hurt me," she whispered. "It wasn't what happened to me, it's what I thought, what I saw, what I did…." With a convulsive shudder, Kala sat up, her eyes clearing as if a fog were rising. "Dustin, it's in the past. It doesn't do any good to bring it up. What I was scared of—what Jason's scared of—didn't happen. It _could've_ though, and it _did_. To this guy. And—it's extra creepy because his name is Jason, too."

That made sense, and Dustin gathered her gently close again. What, exactly, she was worried about, he still didn't know. What could she have seen or done while she'd been kidnapped? He saw the glassy look in her eyes, though, and knew that further questioning would only upset her. For the moment, he decided to let it go.

Kala seemed grateful at the reprieve, and nestled back against his side. Dustin stroked her hair until she quieted, and finally slept. He dozed off not long after she did.

A few hours later, Dustin woke to a sharp kick in the shin. He half-sat up, staring blearily at Kala. "Whuh wazzat for?" he groaned.

She wasn't even awake, eyes screwed shut, curled up into a tight ball of misery. He knew from experience that Kala normally sprawled as she slept, taking over most of the bed and entwining herself around whoever was sharing it with her. This was strange and unexpected—like a lot of things tonight.

Dustin rubbed her back softly, but she cringed from the touch, kicking ineffectually at him. And mumbling, words that _almost_ held meaning. He knew she spoke French and Spanish, but that didn't sound like either. Some weird dream-talk, maybe, but the sense of hidden meaning haunted him.

Obviously this was some kind of nightmare. Dustin caught Kala's shoulder and shook it gently. "C'mon, Kal, wake up. You're okay."

Her response was somewhere between a whimper and a snarl, curling even tighter into herself. That sounded downright creepy, and Dustin shook her a little harder.

Kala woke with a gasp, sitting bolt upright, and for a second she stared at him with such terror that he _knew_ whatever had gone down in Nevada had to be what she was dreaming. "Kal, it's _me_," Dustin implored.

Then she recognized him, and the sudden rush of tears made him pulled her tight to him, arms around her protectively. But no matter what he did and said, she wouldn't tell him the dream.

…

It was late, so late it was actually early, but Lois had been up all night fixing one of the biggest potential gaffes she'd ever seen or even heard of in her newspaper career. The entire front page had had to be rewritten overnight thanks to a sudden late-night revelation. No way was the _Daily Planet_ going to suffer from a 'Dewey Defeats Truman' incident on _her_ watch, so Lois fixed it, emailed it off to the waiting print room, and then sauntered out onto her balcony for a much-needed bit of relaxation.

If Kal-El had been home, she would've found another way to relax, but clearly something had caught his attention. She didn't question his late-night absences, knowing she'd read about them the next day. Instead Lois breathed the night air and watched the city lights twinkling. A distant part of her noted that this was just the sort of moment for a cigarette, but she'd largely shaken that vice.

While she was reflecting, she caught a faint glimpse of red and blue out of the corner of her eye. "Kal-El?" she said questioningly, turning, but he wasn't hovering off the edge of the balcony like he usually did.

Instead she found herself swept up in a powerful grip, soaring through the city in a zigzagging pattern that was nothing like her husband's flight. Almost like flying with her daredevil daughter, something she'd only done _once_. Lois was too startled at first to twist around and look at her kidnapper, but she quickly rectified that.

An enormous toothy grin met her gaze, set in a chalk-white face. Oh no. Oh hell no. She'd dealt with this one a year or so ago, and as far as villains went, he wasn't so terrible. He just didn't know his own strength, which was equal to Kal-El's but coupled to an intellect that sometimes seemed to operate on the level of a child.

He _thought_ he was Superman. He had some of the same powers, but twisted and changed—ice vision and heat breath, for example. The yellow sun slowly turned him to stone, and kryptonite actually healed him. Still, he believed he was Superman, and tried to follow the same priorities. Such as right now.

"Superman _always_ save Lois!" the deep voice crowed, blue eyes bright with glee.

If she'd been able to, Lois would have dropped her head into her hands_. Fuck my life._


	13. It's A HardKnock Life

**We're back and with a fun little chapter that will hopefully whet the appetite. Thanks again to all of those we got the get-well wishes from! Again, it meant a lot!**

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><p>Jason hadn't realized he'd left his calculus book at the apartment until he needed it for homework—which, since today was his late lab, he was doing homework in the middle of the night. Dad was busy; he was on the news again, out in the Pacific dealing with a cruise ship that had gotten in the way of a cyclone while carrying a full complement of passengers. Besides, Jason just felt weird about asking <em>Superman<em> to bring him a textbook. Even if Superman _was_ his dad, it seemed disrespectful.

So he bounded over to Metropolis himself, changing into uniform first. Likely no one would see him in the dark, but he never knew when he'd end up stopping a robbery in progress or helping someone's cat out of a tree. It was best to be prepared. Superboy couldn't afford to be seen in jeans and a t-shirt, or worse, the pajamas he'd changed into before realizing his book was missing.

By the time he reached Metropolis city limits, Jason was grateful for that precaution. He didn't have Kala's hearing, but within the city he could hear his mother's heartbeat, which was elevated, and her voice, which was swearing under her breath. Worried, he pushed his strength another notch, leaping high about Metropolis in an effort to locate her.

What he saw baffled him. Something big—red and blue and bright white—had Mom and was _flying_ around with her, making crazy loops in the sky. Jason's brow furrowed as he started to descend from his leap, already planning his next trajectory to take him closer. Mom wasn't actually too scared, more ticked off than anything else. So he wasn't frightened either.

At least, not until he landed on parapet of a tall apartment building, and finally got a good look at what had Mom. _Bizarro_. Oh, _hell_. This wasn't the family's first little go-around with him; Dad had had several encounters with him in the last year or so, often enough that the pros and cons of his skill-set were well-known amongst the family. Bizarro had pretty much all of Dad's powers, some of them switched around slightly, and a different set of weaknesses. Worse, the creature wasn't in the same zip code as _sane_. Yet another tragedy to lay at Luthor's feet. And now he had Mom, mostly because he thought he was Superman and had this crazy idea that he needed to save Lois Lane. It was sad, but Jason couldn't dwell on pathos when at any moment Bizarro might drop his mother, or squeeze her hard enough to crack a rib. She'd been through this sort of thing a time or two with him already, but there was only so much sense even _she_ could talk into him.

And of course this happened while Dad was out in the middle of something complicated and serious. With a rueful grin, Jason remembered himself and Kala talking to Mom in the hospital after Nevada, telling her that it was now their turn to protect her. _I guess I just called in to duty,_ he thought, and sprang after the creature.

Never mind that his heart was racing. Jason had one huge disadvantage in this fight: Bizarro could fly, and he couldn't. That made catching him much more difficult. Unbeknownst to Jason, his pulse sped up even further as adrenaline coursed through him. This was one task at which he _couldn't_ fail.

…

Kala was feeling tense and unhappy as the bands broke down their equipment at the end of the show. Being a singer, and a girl whom no one was supposed to know had super-strength, she ended up carrying the mic stands to the van and stowing them. That was fine by her, as she didn't especially want company at the moment.

Her mood could have been because she now had to figure out how to manage the recently-enlarged band after the tour ended—which was only a couple weeks away. Ned and Robb were making plans to move to Metropolis, since Kala, Morgan, and Sebast already lived there. Both of them were accustomed to the often hardscrabble life, but Kala knew she couldn't just leave the living situation up to them. It was her band, she had to help support them. But it wasn't like Kala could let either of them stay with her. Dad wouldn't approve of random boys living on the sofa even if he didn't have a secret identity to protect, so she'd probably have to help them find an apartment, and possibly chip in some of the principal from her trust fund for a down payment. Luckily the two were getting along well and could share a place.

The tour had been wonderful, but the band was only making enough to cover costs. Since they weren't signed yet, once they got back home they'd have to work at staying solvent. All of them were going to have find jobs while they got the next album together—time for Kala to head back into the wonderful world of retail. That thought alone was enough to turn her stomach. It was always too tempting to use just a _touch_ of her heat vision on customers who completely ransacked a display she'd just finished straightening. Of course, she could also wait tables—and control the urge to brain any idiots who pinched her butt. There were other options, but most jobs with flexible hours and no degree requirement meant working with the public in some fashion, and usually working with them when they were at their worst.

Of course, her anxiety could've also been because she and Dustin still hadn't talked about where their relationship was going. Traveling together was one thing, but was he coming home to Metropolis with her? Or was she going back to Smallville with him? She might be able to swing Smallville for a couple weeks, and the rest would do her good. Smallville was nothing if not relaxing, and she was always welcome at the farmhouse.

That presented its own problems, though, because how would she be able to look for Metropolis apartments for the boys while she was in Smallville? Not only that, it was _Smallville_. No more overnights, no more snuggling up to Dustin—she'd have to steal time to be with him, and even then they'd probably set tongues wagging all over town. It would be better if he came to Metropolis, but then where would Dustin end up staying? Not at her place—Jason was okay with her dating his best friend now, but Mom and certainly Dad weren't going to let him stay in her room. Besides, there were too many secrets to keep. Kala had the funds for a hotel room, though Dustin probably wouldn't like letting her spend it on him. He was charmingly old-fashioned like that.

The easiest option was to just _tell Dustin the truth_. Then he could stay in Smallville, she could stay in Metropolis, and she could use her flight and speed to sneak out and see him. Of course, there was a whole truckload of problems with _that_ brilliant little idea, starting with the fact that the family secret was a secret for a very good reason, and _no one_ had been told since Ella. The rest all found out on their own.

Not only that, but what if Dustin found out his girlfriend was half-alien and freaked out? Kala didn't like to contemplate that possibility. She had to admit that anyone who learned such a thing might feel betrayed that she'd kept such a secret for so long. Kala couldn't blame Dustin, if he was upset by it. The family secret was the stumbling block in all potential relationships. She'd been almost relieved with Nick, knowing that it wouldn't be forever. Kala had known from the start she'd never have to face the idea of when—or even if—to tell Nick what she really was.

All of it was too heart-achingly complex to deal with at the moment. What she wanted was a moment alone, a moment to just breathe and be herself. Thinking that, Kala trotted back out to where the boys were carefully breaking down Ned's drum set. "Hey, guys, I'm gonna chill here for a bit," she told them. "I just need to think. I'll get a ride and meet you at the hotel later, okay?"

"Everything all right, _mami_?" Sebast asked, only a second before Dustin said, "You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just a lot on my mind." She smiled for them, keeping her expression light. Anxiety was churning her stomach like a cement mixer, and if she let them see, neither of them would let her leave. Robb and Ned and even Morgan didn't know her quite that well yet.

"You sure you can catch a ride?" Dustin asked.

"And not with Captain Creepsauce, no matter how much you wanna fold him up and stuff him in the glove box," Sebast chimed in.

The mention of Alan made her laugh, and that seemed to convince them a litt more. "Nah, it's okay. I've got cab fare if I need it. Just don't get in trouble without me around to save you from yourselves, okay?" Kala raised one eyebrow warningly, looking especially at Sebast.

He only grinned broadly back at her. "Gentlemen, I believe this means we'll be hitting the hotel bar."

Kala groaned and shook her head, hugging him anyway. "Behave, Chupi. I won't be gone _that_ long."

Dustin still looked doubtful, and Kala kissed him. His arms slipped around her waist and he squeezed her extra tight. "It's okay," Kala whispered against his ear. "I just need to think without a fog of testosterone around me."

"I could stay here with you," he murmured back.

Oh, _that_ was a knife in her heart. Dustin had developed friendships with the guys, but she still felt like she was dumping him off on them. But Kala couldn't take him with her. Not where she was going, not without telling him the secret—and no matter how much she wanted to, she wasn't going to do that. "I just need to wander around an empty stage with my own thoughts for a bit, Dustin. I love you. I promise, it'll only be like an hour."

He smiled slightly, drawing back from her. "I know that feeling. Sometimes you just gotta have solitude. I'll see you later, then. Love you too."

With that, Kala wandered off, getting herself lost in the crowd before finding her way to an empty spot backstage. Her stomach was still in knots, her palms were starting to sweat, and her breathing had gone fast and shallow. It felt like the onset of a panic attack—and all she wanted was to get up in the sky, get away from everything, go for a flight and clear the dust from her mind. Maybe then she'd be able to figure out why she was so tense.

She checked for bystanders, saw no one, _heard_ no one, and leaped for the sky. Mere seconds to go from ground level to thirty thousand feet, the sun stronger at this altitude, the world below her charmingly distant. For the first time in an hour, Kala could breathe again, and she drank in the sunlight with her head thrown back and her eyes almost closed. This was perfect…

…except she still felt that nagging anxiety. Kala scowled; usually a sunbath cured everything that ailed her, at least temporarily.

Then it hit her. This _was_ something like a panic attack.

It just wasn't hers.

Whirling in midair, Kala whipped out the mask that was always folded up in a hidden pocket, and hit her top speed headed toward Metropolis and her twin.

…

Bizarro's flying made Richard's worst antics look like a gentle hot-air balloon ride. Lois tried to hold back her nausea as the creature took her on what it probably considered a gentle sightseeing tour.

That was the thing to remember about Bizarro: he wasn't necessarily _evil_, not in the way that, say, Lex Luthor was. It was far too easy to manipulate Bizarro, and he seemed almost unaware of the danger he caused. Lois could pity him—if he hadn't been bouncing around the sky with her like a pinball.

She was just about to try reasoning with him—which was always a headache-inducing exercise—when Bizarro lurched sideways in the sky with a pained roar. Lois found herself clutching the creature's blocky arm as it fell several hundred vertigo-inducing feet, and then leveled off again.

Bizarre hovered for a moment, looking all around with a furious scowl, and Lois was able to see the reason he'd stopped. Jason sprang up to them, landing a solid right to the back of Bizarro's head while the creature was looking in the opposite direction. "Don't worry," he said before gravity called him back.

_Oh yeah. __**Now**__ I'm worried,_ Lois thought, as Bizarro turned and glimpsed her son. "You am friend!" he snarled, and Lois knew enough about his weirdly backward speech pattern to recognize the threat.

"Leave him alone!" she shouted, but of course Bizarro wasn't listening. Instead he dove at breakneck speeds toward Jason, who managed to kick off a building and evade him. Given Jason's lack of flight, it was only a matter of time before Bizarro caught him. And there was nothing—absolutely nothing—Lois could do about it.

In most situations she could find some kind of advantage—connive or cajole her way out of it, if kicking ass wasn't an option. Not right now. Bizarro was locked on to Jason, and he'd forgotten he still held Lois. All she could do was hang on and search desperately for some brilliant solution…

…Bizarro suddenly dropped again, tumbling through the air. The flight so far had been like a roller coaster from Hell, but this was worse, this was free fall from a fatal height, and Lois couldn't help screaming as Bizarro _let go_. Suddenly she was loose, without his invulnerable bio-field protecting her, and the wind buffeted her. The night sky and the city lights swapped places in her view, over and over. She was starting to get dizzy, her stomach left behind in the air.

At moments like this, any reasonable person would've assumed Lois was thinking, _Where the hell is Superman?!_ Honestly, she was too shocked to think it. The only coherent thought running through Lois' mind for the first three seconds of falling was simply, _Ohshitohshitohshit!_ _C'mon, not like this. You gotta be __**kidding**__._

Before she could think about trying to increase her surface area like a skydiver to slow her fall, before she could wonder where the hell her husband was, before she could even think that this time she might actually _die_, Lois was caught. Relief flooded through her. _About damn time. _Lois grabbed onto her rescuer's shoulder, ready to meet Kal-El's blue eyes with a quip about meeting like this.

Except this wasn't her usual savior. She was looking into hazel eyes the exact same color as her own behind a simple black domino. "You really _do_ have issues with everything that flies," Kala laughed.

That threw her completely. "What're you even doing here?" Lois questioned, honestly startled. To the best of her knowledge Kala should've been in a hotel somewhere out West, exhausted by a grueling tour schedule, due to call home Thursday.

"You know Lizardboy's ulcers are contagious," Kala said lightly. As always, the mention of the strange bond between the twins sent a chill down Lois' spine—or that could've been the sudden acceleration and deceleration as Kala swooped up into the night sky before depositing her mother on a convenient rooftop. "Let me go help him beat up Bizarro and I'll be right back," were her parting words.

She flew off before Lois could say anything else. Once upon a time, it had been Lois' most terrifying nightmare to watch her children fly away from her. Right now, it was just a major irritation. "Dammit, Kala," Lois growled under her breath, still trying to convince her stomach that she was standing on solid ground.

Anyone else would've started trying to get back to street level, but Lois was a reporter. If she was going to write up this story, she needed a decent view—and this happened to be a good spot.

…

At first Jason thought the sudden, powerful jet of air that knocked him from the sky meant yet _another_ foe had entered the fray. He managed to land without doing more than superficial damage to a concrete parapet, and turned to scan the sky for Bizarro, his mother, and the new troublemaker. What he saw was terrifying: Lois free-falling.

Before he could jump toward her, a dark blur swept her up and set her down again. Jason pounced at it, and Kala caught his arm in midair. "Hey, Dopey. Didja miss me?"

"You _dork_," he groaned, and hugged her, letting her flight support them both. "Thank you."

"No problem. Can't have you randomly scaring the crap out of me and then leave you to deal," she replied, hugging him back. Only for a moment; Bizarro was only stunned by the slipstream of her flyby, and would be back in action any second. Jason held onto her as Kala soared, seeking a better vantage point.

He _hated_ flying with her. Actually, Jason hated flying in general, preferring to keep his feet on the ground, but he especially hated his twin's particular interpretation. Kala loved flight, the more extreme the better, and she thought nothing of zooming straight up—or straight _down_—thousands of feet at a blistering pace. At that moment, she'd accelerated up so fast that Jason felt momentarily weightless, his feet automatically scrambling for something to brace against and finding only empty air.

"Relax, Chicken Little," Kala laughed, her eyes merry.

"Shut up, we need to find—_there he is!_" Jason pointed toward the blur he'd just seen zipping between buildings … on a course for Lois.

"Oh, no, you don't," Kala growled, and dove.

Jason squeezed his eyes shut. He would say they were dropping like a stone, but a stone would only accelerate as fast as gravity pulled it, some nine feet per second. Kala blew past that, easily doubling or tripling the force of gravity. At her speed, the fall was sickening.

He only opened his eyes when he felt Kala pull out of her dive. "Gotcha, you sonofabitch," she said, rising to hover again as Bizarro barrel-rolled across the space between buildings.

"Keep buzzing him," Jason advised, little as he liked what that meant for him. "We need to get him out of the city."

"Sure thing. Remind me again, what're his weaknesses?" Kala nonchalantly dove again, sweeping close enough to swamp the creature with her slipstream. This time he rose to follow them, less disoriented than before, and she leveled out headed toward the bay.

"Mostly sunlight," Jason managed to say, trying not to squeeze Kala's arm too hard. She didn't have enough invulnerability to overcome his strength; he had to keep telling himself that.

"Well, crap," she muttered, jinking to avoid Bizarro's charge.

At least they were now over the water, with less threat to civilians. "Slow down a bit," Jason said, bracing himself to jump.

…

"I can do better than that," Kala promised with a wicked grin. Jason must've _really_ hated the ride, if he was willing to jump off to _Bizarro_. But then, he'd never been able to handle her mad flying skills.

Kala slowed just a fraction, pulling up into a series of loops. At first Bizarro followed her, bellowing angrily. She kept a close watch, letting her circles become regular, waiting for the moment when he would try to intercept.

And then he did. "_Now!_" she snapped to Jason, and cut across her expected path, bringing them right above Bizarro. Without hesitation, Jason dove at the much bigger creature, latching on around his neck. Surprised, Bizarro tried to shake him off, but Jason was pummeling him mercilessly with his free arm. Kala had seen her brother punch through solid steel, and knew the blows had to hurt.

Without the full measure of super-strength, a punch from her wouldn't have anywhere near the same impact. That didn't mean she was just going to hover around and watch, though. Kala swung away to build momentum, then zoomed back in, sweeping out one leg in a modified version of a kick she'd learned way back in karate class.

It worked—sort of. Kala's boot heel met Bizarro's jaw with a satisfying _thunk!_ But the shock of the impact snapped the heel right off her boot, tumbling into the bay below. Kala had time to think, _Shit, that's my favorite pair!_ Then she was too busy trying to work her way back into the fight.

It quickly became clear that Bizarro was a match for both of them—only just. The twins couldn't take him down, and he couldn't get free of them while they worked together. Jason got dunked into the water a few times, and Kala managed to catch a stray punch that sent her spinning for a couple minutes, but they were holding their own. Not to mention, keeping him away from civilians where he couldn't do any damage. Maybe, just maybe, they could keep him occupied until the sun rose….

Kala sneaked a glance at her watch and was shocked to realize it had been less than half an hour since she went up for an evening flight. She already felt exhausted, like they'd been fighting for hours. "What are we gonna _do_?" she called to Jason.

Before he could answer, a familiar voice called, "Need a hand?"

"_Yes!_" Jason yelled, as Bizarro spun around like a deranged rodeo bull.

…

Kal-El had been in the middle of an important rescue when he registered Lois' rapid pulse—and furious swearing. As long as she was cursing, she was basically okay. He finished up with the cruise ship passengers as quickly as he could, forgoing his usual public-relations moment afterwards. It was important to acknowledge the arriving Coast Guard's courage and to share the credit with them, and he did so, but he couldn't stay to shake hands.

He crossed the continent in a blur, realizing that _both_ of his children had taken up the fight in his absence. For a moment, Kal-El paused, just watching them. Jason and Kala were bold, decisive, as fearless as their mother. Kala dove on Bizarro and Jason leaped away to wrestle the super-villain, both of them acting without a shred of hesitation. Their teamwork was spectacular, too. The twins needed almost no communication in the field, instinctively knowing when to time their joint attacks.

Paternal instinct demanded that he rush down and save them. Bizarro was, after all, extremely dangerous and not to be treated lightly. His appearance and speech pattern might seem laughable, but Kal-El took him seriously after their last encounter, when Bizarro had thrown an entire _building_ at him. No, this member of his growing rogues' gallery was no joke, and fighting him was by no means child's play.

However, his son and daughter were no longer precisely children. Kal-El made himself wait and watch a few moments longer. Kala and Jason had the situation in hand, though they were in something of a stalemate. And this was exactly the kind of practical experience that Jor-El had encouraged him to allow the twins to get. _You cannot always protect them, my son. You must allow them to develop their strength at their own pace. Let them seek, and try, and fail, and try again, even as you did._

Only when Kala called out with a note of worry in her voice did he make himself known. Both twins looked thoroughly relieved, and if he were honest, Kal-El was too. He had only held back for a few minutes, but it seemed like days as Bizarro tried to hammer at his kids. Luckily Kala was too fast to take more than a glancing hit, and Jason had chosen his hold well, shielded from Bizarro's blows by the creature's own broad back.

"Superboy, be ready to let go! Blur, catch your—catch SB!" Good grief, he'd almost said _your brother_. Might as well call them both by name, and ask if they'd done their homework. It was a silly mistake, but Kal-El had never worked with both twins at once. In fact, he'd never actually _worked_ with Kala.

No time to berate himself now. He took a deep breath and dove at the enemy, grabbing Bizarro by the shoulders, and Jason obediently let go. Kal-El increased his speed and dragged Bizarro underwater.

Neither of them would drown, of course. The sudden dive would hopefully keep Bizarro off balance just long enough for what Kal-El was planning. He skimmed the bottom of the bay, heading out to see. In mere seconds he was at the edge of the continental shelf, and dropped them both even further. Bizarro struggled, but Kal-El had a secure hold.

The pressure and the intense cold of the depths combined to render Bizarro quiescent, almost as if lulling him into deep sleep. By the time Kal-El reached the midpoint of the Atlantic, the creature was just floating, no longer flailing to escape.

Now, what to do with him? Letting go and leaving him here wasn't an option. Eventually he'd run out of oxygen and seek the surface, once again becoming a threat. If by then he lacked the will or strength to swim, he could actually drown. Dragging him back up to the sunlight was just as dangerous. While the yellow sun was the source of his strange appearance, causing his tissues to calcify and possibly immobilizing him at high enough doses, exposure to it would certainly rouse him again. Kal-El didn't want to enrage the beast if he could help it.

He hit on a solution, and grinned. Kal-El turned north, moving swiftly through the deep waters. Passing ancient shipwrecks and strange marine life, he made his way to the Arctic. The temperatures at these depths were cold enough that even he could feel it. Soon he was near the Fortress, having used up less than half his lung capacity in the trip. Carefully, Kal-El swam upwards, towing Bizarro along with him.

A flash of his heat vision opened the thick ice above, and a few more careful cuts with it created a chamber above the water level. Kal-El rose into that space and carved out another beside it, this one with a floor of untouched ice. There he gently placed the slumbering Bizarro, and pierced the surrounding ice in a few places for air holes.

It wasn't a perfect answer, but the cold would keep Bizarro in a hibernating state. Maybe a more permanent solution could be found eventually. For the time being, this would keep Bizarro alive, unharmed, and most of all, far away from people.

Now all he had to do was check on his children … who were getting both barrels from their mother. Wincing in sympathy, Kal-El headed back to Metropolis.

…

"Did you _seriously_ go after _Bizarro_? Ever think of calling _Superman_ maybe?" Lois snapped, her hands propped on her hips. Both of her kids looked properly abashed, Jason more so for being dripping wet. His hair was plastered down over his forehead, water droplets running down his temples. Kala, meanwhile, was trying to balance while missing the heel of one boot.

"It's okay, he got there to help us," Jason said, giving her the woebegone puppy eyes. Lois directed a narrow glare at him. When she got hold of her husband, he was going to get a stern talking-to as well. Leaving her to solve her own problems was one thing, but letting the _kids_ take on a super-villain with _his_ powers? No way.

Just then, Kal-El made one of his well-timed entrances. "Ms. Lane, I hear you had a trying evening." That voice never failed to reach right down into her soul and make her sigh, but right now she masked it to wheel on her favorite hero.

"Yeah, you could say that," she snapped.

"Then let me fly you home." Oh, that smile; he knew too well how it affected her, especially when he was in uniform.

Lois narrowed her eyes and let her chin jut out stubbornly. "Excuse me, but I _am_ a reporter, and I'm not leaving until I get the story from the heroes of the hour."

"Aw, c'mon. I have homework," Jason complained.

Kala chimed in, "And that's my cue to exit stage left. The Blur doesn't do interviews—except with _Rolling Stone_." She darted over and kissed her mother's cheek briefly, whispering, "Love you, Mom" before disappearing.

"That's totally unfair," Jason said morosely.

"I saw the end of the fight," Kal-El said, startling his son and his wife about equally. Lois stared at him. He'd stood around—well, hovered around—_watching_ while that beast fought with the kids? "Superboy and Blur conducted themselves admirably, and had the situation under control until I intervened to contain the creature. Now, Ms. Lane, wouldn't you rather have that interview someplace a little less public?"

"Oh yeah," she growled, her gaze almost as dangerous as his heat vision.

A few minutes and a much-appreciated _slow_ flight later, the three of them were at the apartment, Jason picking up a textbook he'd apparently forgotten. "Mom, are you okay?" he finally asked, once in the safety of their home.

"I'm great, except I want to know why the hell your dad decided that fighting super-villains was a damn _spectator sport_," she said, and reined in her temper again. It wasn't his fault; her boy had seen a problem and leaped to fix it, as usual. "You were brilliant, Jason. I love you."

He was still drenched, but Lois hugged him all the same, ignoring the cold brackish water on her clothes. Jason grinned when she kissed his cheek. "I love you, too, Mom," he said, and was gone.

Now it was Kal-El's turn, and Lois rounded on him, letting maternal wrath off its leash. "You _watched the fight_? What, like it was pay-per-view wrestling or something? Are you freaking kidding me?!"

Kal-El stepped forward—still in the suit, the sneaky bastard—and caught her shoulders. "Lois, they were fine. They _had_ him. Working together, they got him out of the city, away from anything or anyone he could destroy, and he _couldn't_ get away from them."

"It's _Bizarro_! He's as strong as you are! Not to mention he's out of his frikkin' _mind_! And you just let them get smacked around?!" Her voice was rising, the cold fear she hadn't felt for herself raising goosebumps on her skin when she thought of her children.

"Lois, Bizarro was the one getting smacked around. Kala's faster than he is, and Jason's pretty much his equal in strength. Besides, I was right there. I could've jumped in if I needed to, and I _did_, when they didn't have a plan to contain him. It was fine. The two of them together are more than a match for the likes of him." Kal-El leaned closer to her, running his hands soothingly up and down her arms.

Lois bit her lip. What she wanted was to rage at him, but he had a point. "Somehow I'm not surprised they've got teamwork down pat," she muttered, letting out a frustrated sigh.

He chuckled softly, resting his forehead against hers. "I wish I had that kind of synchronized harmony with anyone. There's quite a few I work well with, and three or four I work _really_ well with, but none like that. They didn't even need to speak to each other, Lois. Perfect timing. They were never in any real danger, not for a second."

"Yeah, well," Lois murmured. Somehow she was in his arms, the warmth of his hands was seeping into her shoulders, and she couldn't quite stay angry with him.

Except for one thing. "I _am_ getting an interview after this," Lois said determinedly, and kissed him.

Kal-El smiled against her lips. "It's a promise. Doesn't Lois Lane _always_ get an interview with Superman when she wants one?"

"That's not all she gets," Lois teased, the last of her worry evaporating as she made her peace with tonight's events. "I seem to remember getting two of the best souvenirs ever."

…

Far to the north, Bizarro slumbered. His recent memories were already fading. Fighting the two strangers was just a blur of anger and traded blows; fighting the impostor Superman was clearer. A good fight, one against three, the kind of odds he didn't often get. And he'd almost won, too. Or so he thought. It was hard to tell now as the cold crept in and lulled him. Cold dulled the pain of the yellow sun on his stony skin, and it soothed the frustrated wrath that was so much a part of him.

On some level, he knew what he was: an imperfect copy. A pitiable monster. The knowledge was buried deep, _deep_ in his psyche, words of failure spoken in Lex Luthor's voice. That drove his anger most of the time, even though he couldn't bear to let the thought cross his forebrain.

As his body temperature, heart rate, and brain activity dropped closer to hibernation, Bizarro remembered saving Lois. That was the important part. He would _always_ save her. A smile softened his craggy features for an instant before his conscious mind finally blanked out.


	14. Food for Thought

Day late, but much better than it looked yesterday. I want to throw a wink and a nod at **xenokattz** for her inspiration on Suzanne. She knows why and maybe later, so will you. ;) Thanks, lady, for making me never think of her without the wonderful background you've written for her in fandom. Also, thanks for your help the other night. I promise I'll link those fics later, once I get where I'm going with the plot here.

Also, belated thanks [if I somehow forgot to mention it] to my beloved **saavikam77** for **ALL** of the help and assistance on all thing Batclan. We could never have done what we've done with you and we all three know it. Then again, you have a ton of accolades coming up!

That said, on with the show!

* * *

><p>It was that time of year again. All the high school seniors were visiting colleges, trying to decide where the spend the next few years of their lives. The attitudes of the upperclassmen at Berkeley were evenly split between welcoming and disdainful. Elise, newly a sophmore herself, had encountered too many of the latter, so she tried to be friendly and helpful whenever she encountered someone who looked completely lost.<p>

The girl who got behind her in line at the Terrace Café didn't precisely look lost, though she did look a little too young to be a college student, and she was wearing a nametag. No one else seemed to be with her, which was unusual. Parents generally hovered around during these visits, and both of Elise's had been at her side the whole time she toured the campus.

Elise ordered her coffee and then turned to the girl with a smile, quickly reading her nametag. "Plus whatever … Suzanne's having. Hi, Suzanne, I'm Elise. Last year I was doing the same thing you're doing, and it was a lot to get my mind around." She offered her hand.

Suzanne shook, mouth quirking up in a grin, and tossed her blonde ponytail over one shoulder. "Just a caramel caffé latte, please. And thanks. It's a really interesting campus."

"And confusing to get around, the first little while. But then you found your way to coffee, so you're better off than I was the first week." They both chuckled at that as Elise paid. The drinks were served quickly, and they walked away slowly. "So what's your major?" Elise asked, hoping to have met another science major.

"I still haven't completely decided," Suzanne admitted. "My man-child Dad said I didn't have to go to college yet if I didn't want, but my brilliant, control-freak Mom insisted." The younger girl shrugged nonchalantly at that, but the little grin that followed it showed a lack of real sarcasm. Sounded like a fun story hidden in those words.

Elise could only nod, sharing the smile. It had always seemed like a foregone conclusion that she would go to college, study science, and make both of her parents proud. Even if, sometimes, it hadn't been the easiest choice to make. "Well, Berkeley's pretty much as awesome as they make it sound. I mean, I'm from Metropolis originally, so I had a lot of culture shock to deal with. That was pretty much it." There was a niggling thought in the back of her mind, but she slapped it away. It had been for the best. For everyone.

"Oh, I'm from Star City. I'm used to this. I hear a lot about Metropolis, though. Is it really like they say?" Suzanne asked.

That made her raise her brows, tilting her head. "Depends on what they say. It's a really great city, overall. Busy, always something new going on all the time. Blink and you miss it. Not quite as … well, it's not like the Bay area, but it's progressive."

"Do you really get to see Superman all the time?"

That question almost made Elise spit out a mouthful of coffee, but she thought she hid it well. _I can never get away from them,_ she thought, and the idea was almost reassuring. Then again, when you were from Metropolis, the home-town hero was always a curiosity. "Well, um, if you walk around looking up all the time you might, but then you're more likely to trip over your own feet. Besides, do you see Green Arrow all the time in Star City?"

"Not unless you're on the wrong side of the law. And then, I have it under good authority that you don't _want_ to see him," Suzanne quipped, and both girls laughed.

They talked a little more, swapping stories of their respective cities and high schools, Elise answering the younger girl's questions about the college. Pretty soon Elise would have to head to her next class, though, and told Suzanne so. By then she rather hoped the younger girl would choose Berkeley. It would be nice to have a friend, someone she could show the ropes to.

"One more question," Suzanne asked, and her blue eyes were intent. "Does Berkeley have an archery club?"

Coming after the Green Arrow comment, it took all Elise had not to drop her head in her hands. _Oh God, she's a hero fan. Should have seen it coming._ Elise bit her lip, thinking. "I don't think so. We've got a Quidditch League, though."

The younger girl laughed merrily. "I'll take it!"

….

Three more shows, that was it. Robb and Ned were already looking at apartments for rent in Metropolis, and freaking out over the prices. Even in Suicide Slum, a two-bedroom walk-up went for more than they could ever afford. Sebast just chuckled at them. "What you should really do is just rent a house in the 'burbs. I mean, at least there you won't have to pay for parking for the cars. And shit, Ned, that hearse is gonna take up two spots. I know people in the city who pay a hundred bucks a month for a parking spot." Kala nodded agreement, her mouth still full from lunch.

"Holy crap," Robb muttered. "Hey, why can't we all just move to New Orleans?"

"Not much better in the city," Ned pointed out. "My folks live out Metairie way because it's a little better."

"Besides, _we_ all live in Metropolis," Morgan added. "It makes more sense for you two to come to us."

"I dunno, I liked New Orleans. Boys with Southern accents and all," Sebast mused. Ah, the memories—but this tour was leaving him with what would've been a lifetime of memories for anyone else. Meanwhile, Robb and Ned were learning. They just rolled their eyes at him.

"I guess what they say about Southern gals applies to Southern guys, then," Ned said with a shrug.

"And what do they say about Southern gals?" Sebast asked, ignoring Kala as she snickered over his pronunciation of 'gals'. "Purely for research purposes, you understand."

"Well, when a girl's got a thick Southern accent, by the time she finishes telling you she's not that kinda girl … she already is." Ned grinned at what was an old joke to him, but to the others it was new enough to elicit laughter.

Kala almost pitched out of her seat laughing, getting looks from the only other people in the diner during the lunch hour. Sebast patted her back. "You okay? Cracking up from the pressure of being a rock star?"

Still chortling, she managed to say, "No, I heard that joke when I was like twelve. Aunt Tobie's from Alabama originally, Sebast. She said that about the girls back home talking to Mom, and nobody would explain the joke to me for _years_."

He had to laugh at that. Tobie Raines was an older female version of Sebast himself; he understood that in her wild youth she'd had the same talent he did for scoring even in the unlikeliest of places.

The band teased each other for a while about their origins, with Dustin ending that by saying, "I win. I'm from a place called _Smallville_. You can't beat that." He had a point, at that. Sebast actually liked Smallville, in a strange anthropological way, but he doubted he could live there for more than a few days.

After the laughter that followed, Robb said, "But seriously. You think we can get a house for money we can afford? I mean, we're looking at really crappy jobs. Fast food and stuff."

"Mechanics make pretty decent money," Dustin put in. "And I know you guys are gonna start making better money playing gigs. If we pooled our funds and shared a place we could do pretty well."

Sebast saw the way Kala's eyes widened at that. Evidently she and Dustin hadn't quite talked this one over. "Sounds like a plan to me. I mean, I was planning to live at home, but it'd be nice to have our own place. Maybe we can have an actual garage to be a garage band. I'd chip in for that."

"You gotta get a job first, bitch," Kala teased.

He leaned over and stuck his tongue in her ear, making her yelp and swat at him. "Whatever, _chula_. I still have friends in the convenience store industry. I could get a job there." Kala gagged, remembering _why_ he had those friends. Sebast counted that one a win; shocking her was still something of a hobby, though it was harder these days.

"Isn't that dangerous?" Robb asked.

"Nah, I won't work anywhere they don't have a big sheet of bullet-proof glass between me and the rabid public. I don't wanna be held up. Forget that." Sebast kicked back and looked at Kala. "Are you gonna go back to Retail Hell? It's the right season."

Kala groaned, leaning heavily on Dustin's shoulder. "The money's good but the customers eat your soul a piece at a time. I swear I can feel the gnawing. Every time they stand underneath the sign that says Bath Ensembles and ask where the towels are, I want to eat my own liver."

Dustin patted her hair. "You could always come with me and get hired as a receptionist at a repair shop or something. I bet they'd hire you just because you don't look like someone who'd know SAE from metric, but you could do oil changes during the rush and really freak them out."

"And I've seen how much effort it takes to get the grease out from under your nails after you've been working on cars all day. Nope, not for me," Kala laughed, and kissed him.

"High-maintenance diva," Sebast teased, and she crossed her eyes at him. Dustin just hugged her.

"You love me as a diva," Kala said loftily, and the table chorused an affirmative to her delight. Sebast smirked as if it had all been his idea.

But then Kala tipped her head back and looked up at Dustin from heavily-lined—even at six in the morning—eyes. "Are you sure about this? I mean, I would _love_ to have you nearby. But I know how you are about the city…."

Sebast caught his breath. Dustin was _good_ for Kala; he was the only guy she'd shown interest in whom Sebast approved of. And with good reason. Dustin honestly cared about her, and as different as they'd grown to be, he brought out a side of her that was carefree and sunny. Which, given the way her sixteenth year had gone, she needed. Sebast knew about her nightmares, and he tried to give her all the support he could—they were closer than any best friends he knew. But what he couldn't give her, Dustin could. And he liked the boy for that, as well as for the fact that Dustin accepted him and his place in Kala's life.

Dustin kissed Kala's forehead and said, "Well, last time I stayed with you and Jason, and I don't think your parents are gonna like that much now that we're officially an item."

"And now that you don't have Big Brother in the house watching over you," Sebast pointed out. That earned him a pouty look, Kala sticking her tongue out, and he scrunched up his nose at her.

"My point is, I was in the middle of the city with you guys. If we can get someplace in the suburbs, I might be able to swing it." Dustin kissed her hair again, and then added musingly, "I should probably call my parents and tell them about this. They're gonna freak out a little bit."

"A little?" Robb scoffed. "Hell, my parents are used to this stuff, but traveling musicians are a lot more common than traveling mechanics."

"Hey, there's no time like the present to get out and see the world," Sebast said. "Seriously, Dustin, Metropolis could use some _honest_ mechanics. And when we get signed by a label and become famous, we're going to need someone with mechanical knowledge to supervise our road crew."

"I'll take roadie, thanks, but not crew supervisor," Dustin laughed.

Kala sighed and rolled her eyes. "It's kinda cheese toast to have your _boyfriend_ be the roadie."

"It's what I like," Dustin said. "Seriously, guys. There's satisfaction in being a mechanic. People come to you with problems, cars come in the shop with all sorts of weird crap done to them, and you figure out what's wrong and fix it. At the end of the day, you're dirty and sweaty and tired, but you're the guy who makes things go right again. It's good for the soul."

The five musicians took a moment to digest that. "Are all mechanics philosophers too?" Ned asked.

"Oh yeah. You really have to think about the world, and humankind's place in it, when you're elbow deep in an engine and the damn bolt sheers off. Plus that's where you learn the best swears."

"You don't curse," Kala said, looking at him in amazement, and Sebast chuckled.

"Around ladies I don't, or at people. But cars have to be cussed sometimes to work right."

With that pronouncement, and the playful grin that blossomed on Kala's face in answer to it, Sebast began to seriously plot how he could keep Dustin around long-term. Anything that made his girl happy was fine by him, even if he missed some of the time they spent together.

…

With a couple hours between classes, Jason texted Cassie. _Wanna do lunch?_

_Sure, where?_ The reply came back in seconds, making him grin.

_Your pick,_ he typed back, picking up his pace. He'd need to change shirts for lunch with Cassie; this morning he'd gotten out of bed late, and had gone to his early classes in the old Godzilla t-shirt he'd slept in last night. At least he'd put on jeans and shoes first. A couple of people in his 7 AM class routinely showed up in pajamas with obvious bed-head.

A longer pause as Cassie evidently thought about it, and Jason had time to jog to his dorm, throw on a shirt, spritz on some of the Truth cologne that Kala had gotten him as a random going-to-college gift. The attached gift card had read, _So you can smell like a MAN … and not a lizard._ Ever since rescuing Mom from Bizarro, though, Kala had almost quit calling him Lizardboy. Jason would've been happier about that if the replacement nickname hadn't been The Amazing Flea.

Eventually Cassie replied, _Italian maybe?_

_I know the best place in Metropolis,_ Jason replied, giving her an address. So what if he had to change _again_, into uniform once he was out of line of sight, and hurry to bound his way over there. The family-owned Italian restaurant he'd been going to with Mom since he was about five was completely worth it.

Although when he took the first jump, off a secluded area of Wyman Park, he couldn't help remembering Kala's teasing. The Amazing Flea, the Kryptonian Jumping Bean, or even just Pogo Loco. His twin insisted that flying was better, but he didn't even like flying with _Dad_, and Kala's aerial skills made him nauseous.

Flight was just too _fast_. One little mistake and he could end up doing a header into a building—an occupied building, maybe, with his luck. Kala didn't have any trouble, she flew on intuition and instinct, and he'd seen her close her eyes in mid-flight. That was stomach-cramping levels of terror, right there. Flying _blind_? Heck no.

Jason reached the apex of his leap, and started to arc down. He'd land in Philadelphia; his usual trajectory brought him into a little-used public park, where he could run for eight or ten strides before jumping again. The falling part of his leaps sucked, actually. His control was minimal, and a badly-angled landing could result in property damage.

Kala insisted—and annoyingly, Cassie agreed—that the fact that he didn't leave craters every time he landed meant he was using _some_ kind of flight. They also said the slight steering he was able to do as he fell was flight, but that was simple aerodynamics, like a skydiver changing position to alter course. The girls would never understand how much he loathed the thought of having flight. Running and jumping were fairly sane powers; with flight there were no limits, no constraints, no control.

What irked him the most, though, was not having the speed. Sure, he could match speeds with a car, but even running a hundred miles an hour wouldn't get him to Metropolis as fast as his strength-based (it had to be strength, _had_ to be) leaps. And then again, if he did run, a cop might give him a speeding ticket. Jason didn't want to put himself or a police officer into that embarrassing situation.

Of course Kala just flew, and casually broke the sound barrier like it was nothing. She did it high enough that her sonic booms didn't shatter windows, and she was learning the main airplane routes over the U.S. so she didn't startle any pilots. Cassie flew, too, not quite with Kala's ridiculous speed, but she was cruising toward Metropolis right now….

At the pinnacle of his next jump, Cassie caught his elbow, and Jason managed not to yell. "Don't do that!" he said, hanging from her grip as she leveled out toward Metropolis. "Jeez, Cassie, _warn_ a guy!"

"Yeah, well, my big sister doesn't warn your dad when she turns up with the jet, and _he_ doesn't freak out," Cassie informed him, blue eyes sparkling with mischief.

Jason groaned. Why were all the girls he knew such pranksters? "Just for that I'm making you pay for your share," he lied.

…

Wednesday was the traditional Boys Club luncheon, so Lois skipped out early to get something to eat. She'd have to hold down the fort for an hour while Ron, Jimmy, and Clark met Richard at the Ace o' Clubs, so she needed to fortify herself with the four food groups as she'd learned them back in college: caffeine, sugar, grease, and hot sauce.

Dooley's was right nearby and served a delicious blue cheese burger, which Lois could get slathered in buffalo sauce for the perfect balance of heat and sweet. Plus their coffee was almost as high-test as what was brewing in the break room. Load it up with sugar, and she had a perfect meal.

Lois had called before leaving her office, so the burger was coming out of the kitchen as she walked in the door. "Thanks," she said with a grin, leaving a generous tip, and looked for a booth that didn't wobble too badly.

"Oh _no_, I cannot dine with the heathens of print media," a falsely-snotty voice said from her left, and Lois turned to meet Cat's amused gaze.

"That ship sailed _decades_ ago," Lois shot back, plopping down across from her. "Long before you even ready to be in front of the camera."

"Hey, I was in front of the cameras my third week on the job," Cat pointed out.

"Because it was storm coverage and you wore white," Lois shot back. "I meant back when we were journalism students and didn't have the right to even be in here."

"Yeah, but when did we ever obey the rules? Besides, no one would ever throw either of us out of a bar." Cat was having a burger, too, one of Dooley's new 'fancy' items. The journalistic clientele would never allow it to get too haughty, however.

"How's the teriyaki burger?" Lois asked, and took a bite of her blue cheese.

"Tastes like a regular burger with teriyaki sauce on it," Cat laughed. "It's a change. Speaking of change, what's new in the Kent house?"

Lois narrowed her eyes. "Nothing much is new in the _Lane_-Kent house, thanks. And you? How's Adam?"

"Adam is delightful. He and Ian are going to a ballgame this afternoon. I was excluded because it's manly bonding time. You know, Lois, I think this is the best decision I ever made." The blonde smiled, and the radiance of it lit up her face. While she never looked her age to begin with, the sheer joy in her expression would've knocked an additional ten years off anyone's estimate.

Lois smiled back. It had always saddened her that Cat, who had always been ridiculously beautiful and the sweetest-tempered of their little triumvirate of reporting evil, had the most trouble with relationships. She always seemed to worry so much, and over the things that she really shouldn't have. Now, finally, Cat had some stability in her life. Her job was secure, her relationship with Ian was rock-solid, and having Adam gave the sense of purpose she needed to resist her own demons. "Yeah, best decision you could've made. Wish I'd thought the same, but mine turned out for the best, too."

"Yeah, well, the twins were a surprise. And you had amnesia around then too, so it wasn't a surprise you should've expected, y'know. Besides, Lois, you're the mom I hope I can be like."

"Oh, God, don't wish that on yourself," Lois groaned. "You don't understand. It was like jumping out of a plane without a parachute. Crash course, all the way down. And I had _two_ of them. Momma was right, they were lucky to have _survived_."

"Stop it, Lo. You're not a hamster, you wouldn't eat your young. Speaking of pets, by the way, Adam wants a puppy. Can you maybe hook me up with the beagle guy—Ben, right? Clark's stepdad?"

That got a snicker from Lois. "Yeah, but do you really want to get one? Cat, they're _loud_. Really loud. Chewie sounds like a full-grown bloodhound, and even though Bagel's twelve now, she still howls every time a helicopter passes over the apartment." The thought of her older pup made Lois smile wistfully. Bagel still wore the gold-plated tag Jason had gotten for her after she'd bitten Giselle, with 'Bagel the Brave' deeply etched into it. It never failed to amuse Lois that even the _pets_ got into the fight for justice.

"I'll think about it. Maybe I should look at something smaller. Ian wants to go to the shelter and try to find a grown-up dog instead of a puppy. It might be easier than trying to raise a dog and a kid at the same time." The corners of her eyes crinkled in mirth at that.

Lois just snorted amusement. "I had twins, a ferret, an iguana, and Richard, all at once. And then I got rid of the pilot and picked up a puppy—the one Clark kept calling our youngest. Yeah, Cat, simplify things if you can."

"My son is not getting any weasels or lizards or snakes or anything weird," Cat proclaimed.

"That's what I thought, but then Perry decided to help out," Lois retorted, and both of them laughed.

A couple more bites into her meal, and Cat said slyly, "So I notice you didn't mention the actual _news_."

"What news?" Lois said warily, knowing exactly what she meant. Tobie had already left a searing message on her voicemail about it.

"Oh, I don't know. Just the fact that you have a superhero magnet hidden on you somewhere," Cat teased, and Lois sighed irritably. "Seriously, Lois. _No one_ ever gets to see the Blur, _you_ get rescued by her. Tobie almost had an aneurysm."

Lois pointed at her with a french fry before dipping it in her hot sauce. "And Superboy, mind you. Besides, it's not a super_hero_ magnet I have. They only came after me because Bizarro nabbed me. And I know, Tobe called me and ranted. She needs to move to Gateway City and flag down the Wonders or something."

"So, Blur. Got a quote for me?" Cat asked.

Shaking her head, Lois replied with as much of the truth as she could. "Nope. I didn't even get a quote from _her_. She showed up, helped Superboy, and vanished. Which is her usual M.O., I might add. I didn't get special treatment; she just saved my life. Which is what the capes do."

"And you wonder why reporters fresh out of college think jumping off buildings is a good way to get an interview," Cat sighed.

"I didn't jump off a building to meet Superman, I fell out of a damn helicopter," Lois shot back. "That was a complete freak accident. I didn't know there'd be anyone to catch me, Cat. By rights I should've been a smear on the pavement."

"Gross. So glad I didn't get the quesadilla," Cat remarked. "But really. Did you notice anything about the Blur we could add to our collective journalistic knowledge?"

Lois sighed again. This was to be expected, and she knew how to handle it. "All right, fine. I only saw her for like a minute, at night, and she wears a mask. But … young, slim, probably a little taller than me. Dark hair. Fast as hell—I mean _really_ fast. And quippy."

"Aren't they all these days?" Cat mused.

"Superboy isn't as quick on a comeback," Lois replied.

"Yeah, but he strikes me as the serious type," Cat said. "Too cute, though. Every time he does a press conference I just wanna pinch his cheeks. Oh, that's one more thing: you think there's any truth to the Superblur thing?"

Going face-down into her burger wasn't an option. "I wasn't around them both long enough. Blur just seemed locked into getting in, getting the job done, and getting out. Probably someplace she needed to be."

"Yeah, and no one knows where's she based out of either, so she could be running home. Who knows, with as young as some of these kids are, she might've had a curfew or something," Cat laughed. "Makes me wonder what we'd have been like, the three of us, if we'd had powers when we were that young."

"Perish the thought," Lois said, and shuddered. "Can you _imagine_ how much trouble we would've gotten ourselves into?"

Cat chortled at that. "Oh, I can imagine. You would be known and feared all along the East Coast. I'd be a total publicity stunt everywhere I went. And if Tobie Raines could fly, Wonder Woman would've had to throw her into orbit at least once."

They both laughed out loud at that. "You're right, we're better off with our wits being our only superpowers," Lois managed to say at last.

…

Once Lois returned—in a strangely good mood, and that boded ill for everyone—Jimmy headed for the door, accompanied by Ron and Clark. If pressed, he would call this an Interdepartmental Luncheon and claim networking benefits. Perry just grumbled at them not to have more than one beer. Clark wouldn't have that, of course. Ever since he'd become the head of International, he took a soda on their lunch breaks, or even occasionally a glass of milk. Not that one beer would've hurt a guy like Clark, who was already profoundly mellow, but it was the principle of the thing.

Richard was already waiting for them, having taken an early lunch. He raised his glass to the three men walking in with a broad grin. "This week's meeting of the Lucky Suckers Club is officially in session," he proclaimed.

"Too true," Ron laughed. "And you're the luckiest of all, Mr. Millionaire."

"Hey, hey," Jimmy cut in. "_I'm_ the luckiest of all. Unlike you guys, I didn't get married."

All of them chuckled at that. Richard added, "Well, Jim, if you have to surrender your autonomy and your right to watch football in your boxers at four in the afternoon, then the way to do it is to marry a gorgeous millionaire who loves you."

"Joke all you want, you weren't thinking about the money when you married her," Ron pointed out.

"Of course not. I was thinking about the red hair and the fact that Lana puts up with me. The bank balance is a perk," Richard joked back.

Clark patted Richard's shoulder. "Don't worry. If I ever thought for a second that the money actually mattered to you, I wouldn't have let you marry her." It was one of those rare moments when Jimmy remembered that yeah, Clark was the tallest of them, and had twenty pounds or more on Richard.

"And that's why _I_ let _you_ marry _my_ ex," Richard retorted swiftly, grabbing his hand and shaking it.

"Yeah, could be worse. You could've listened to the twins and moved everybody into the Riverside house together," Ron said.

"I would've left town until the dust settled," Jimmy cut in.

Ron snapped his fingers then. "Oh, that reminds me. Lucy wanted me to ask you all about Thanksgiving at our place this year. Sound good?"

"I never turn down free homemade dinners," Jimmy teased.

"Let me get with Lana, but it should be okay," Richard said.

"Count us in," Clark said.

Nodding, Ron took a sip of his beer. "Great. And Ben's invited too. You know Lucy, as soon as the weather turns colder she wants to feed the world. Clark, can you get with the twins, or should I call them?"

"Just say 'free food' out loud, and they'll appear," Richard quipped. "The only reason it didn't work just then is because we're in a bar."

Jimmy chuckled at that; once upon a time he had been the ravenous appetite of the group, but Kala and Jason could easily demolish a company party's buffet, and they'd always made a beeline for desk when he kept candy there for them. The photographer sighed. That youthful appetite and metabolism was long gone for him, even if he still had the freckles his mom had promised would fade with age. "I miss the twins," he said aloud.

"They miss you, too," Clark told him. "Jason's only home on weekends sometimes, but Kala should be home from that tour soon. I can almost guarantee she'll be up at the office causing mayhem as often as she can."

"I'll stock up on sour candy," Jimmy said. In his eyes, Kala was always going to be the curly-haired toddler with the adorably bossy demeanor, but now he could trust her to go through his photo files without damaging things. She always loved to see the places he'd been. He'd have to remember to show her the shots from Tibet. Kala could lose herself for hours in images of the landscapes, architecture, and people.

The conversation rambled about the various children, Jimmy mostly kicking back and taking it in. Ron's peripatetic daughter Joanne—"Never name a kid after Lois," he joked—was now painting in Puerto Rico, but she had plans to fly back to the continental U.S. and paint the Gulf Coast. Perry and Loueen's son Bryan was showing an interest in the newspaper, and Perry had brought him up to the offices on the occasional afternoon, boasting about making him the next editor since Lois didn't want the job. Kristin, of course, was still preening over the purple streaks in her hair, which were beginning to fade much to Lana's relief. And of course, Cat Grant came up in conversation too, with her adoption of Adam finalized and the little boy settling in with her and Ian.

Jimmy nursed his beer and let it all wash over him. When he was younger, he would've been a little jealous—here he was listening to three guys talk about their lives with gorgeous women, all of whom he admired tremendously. But the marriage and kids deal wasn't for him. He'd discovered he loved travel, loved living through his camera lens, all of his focus on getting the perfect shot instead of worrying about kids and a mortgage and everything else.

But still, the homey atmosphere warmed his heart, and he was surprised by the things he'd missed. Maybe it was best if he stuck to the home front for a while. After all, there were always dramatic images to capture in Metropolis.

Maybe, with a little of the famous Olsen luck and an assist from Lois' tendency to attract trouble, he could snare the first _focused_ photograph of the Blur.


	15. Somewhere in Between

The countdown to vacation and sanity hath begun. And I mean the _**REAL**_ vacation. This year, we've made the decision that we're going to spend the money and head back up to the Blue Ridge again because the need to recharge is so huge. It's been two years and I'm NEVER going without at least one season up there again. I get absolutely too miserable without it.

That said, we'll be gone **the** **27th of October through the 2nd of November**. Now, there's not going to be posting that week, as we'll be getting home the day before it's due and we plan to actually head out and do things so we can clear our heads and be filled up with all of those wonderful plots that Mountain-Time always gives us.

We'll be looking everything over and might even take two weeks, just so it's fair to both sets of readers. I hate to leave one or the other hanging, so I'll let you know what we decide. ;)

I'll keep you all posted.

* * *

><p>Tim was glad to be back in Gotham City again, but he found it quiet—too quiet. With Red Hood apparently gone and Black Mask in jail, the average level of violence and mayhem had dropped. Not for long, of course. But right now, the relative peace made him uneasy. Someone somewhere was plotting the next big thing.<p>

He spent hours on patrol, monitoring his city, only to return to Titans headquarters and pore over the databases from there. That was what he was in the middle of doing when Steph and Cassie descended on him.

Steph propped her hip against his desk and leaned over so she blocked his view of the screens. "Hey Robin, two hot blondes have been calling your name for the last five minutes. What gives?"

Tim looked up at her sternly. There was only a year or so between them, but sometimes he felt impossibly old and serious compared to Steph. "I've got work to do," he told her.

"There's always work to do, Tim," Steph said. "That's how this business works. But it's quiet right now. Let's steal a little time to ourselves, hmm? I think, after the last month or so, we're kinda allowed a little real-life downtime. I only mean a couple of hours, nothing drastic."

"It's only quiet because they're planning something else," he insisted.

Cassie cut in then, frowning a little. "Come on. None of us can do this 24/7. Remember when I couldn't get that through my head? You can take a break. Really, you _need_ to take a break. I promise Gotham won't implode if you do. Nightwing's still out there backing up patrols right now and you know Dinah is, too."

He scowled, and Steph added, "Seriously, I'd be worried about you growing into that chair if you didn't spend so much time patrolling. When was the last time you slept more than two hours?"

"Or ate something that wasn't a protein bar?" Cassie put in, crossing her arms to stare at him.

The Amazonian Disapproval Glare didn't work. Tim had more important things in mind at the moment. With the entire Bat-family off-balance after Red Hood's war, Tim had to push himself as hard as he could. Bruce was as broken as he'd been after Jason Todd's death, and this time Tim wasn't sure he could put him back together.

"Enough of this. His girlfriend can't make him see sense, the Amazon can't make him see sense," Steph sighed. "That's it. Cassie, let's call in the big guns."

"I'm on it," Cassie said with utter seriousness, pulling out her phone and sending a text.

Tim scowled more intensely. Whatever nonsense they had planned, he wasn't going to get into it. Gotham was too important, the mission was too important, he had no time for frivolity … and then he heard a heavier step walking into the room, and Jason Kent picked him bodily up out of the chair and set him down, staring eye to eye. "This is an intervention, Tim," he said.

"I don't _need_ an intervention," Tim growled back, automatically trying to shrug free of Jason's grip and failing utterly.

Cassie took one arm and Steph took the other. For the first time Tim saw the worry in their expressions. Jason looked at him with honest blue eyes full of concern. "Tim, you're not Bruce. You shouldn't have to _be_ Bruce. That's why there's a whole network of Bats. And even with that, things still happen. Everything that goes wrong in Gotham isn't your fault. You guys wouldn't be a team if you were meant to handle it on your own."

"And that's a Super telling you that you have a guilt complex," Steph added.

Jason smiled, sadly. "You can't fix all of it, either. You have to be a _person_ first, before you can be a hero. Even Dick would tell you that. And people our age go on double dates and eat pizza and watch movies. Also something Dick would tell you."

"Sometimes we all need to remember _why_ we do this," Cassie said.

"I know why _I_ do it," Tim snarled. "I'm not like the two of you—I don't have powers and feel the need to use them for good. I'm not like Steph or Helena, I don't have a family history to atone for. I'm not like Dick or Jay, either, I didn't lose everything and turn to crime-fighting so no one else would have to go through that. You forget, guys, I'm in this because _he needs me_!"

"Yeah, and he needs you in top form," Jason replied. "Which you won't be in if you work yourself to death like this. Tim, you're _going_ out in plainclothes tonight, we're going to have pizza, we're going to watch a movie. If you don't like it you can sulk all night, but _we're kids_. We need to have some fun once in a while."

"Besides, Babs is on surveillance tonight," Steph said.

For a moment, Tim swayed. Most of him wanted to stay in and work, because that was his calling, that was what he was best at. But there were times when he yearned to be ordinary again. The prep school boy who'd been genius enough to figure out Batman's identity was in his past now; Red Robin was his present and future.

But … he wasn't _just_ Robin. "All right, I'll go," he said, and part of him was relieved. If he became as obsessed and driven as Bruce was, then who was going to be Robin for him and drag him out into the light? Who, if not his best friends.

Cassie and Jason high-fived each other, and Steph kissed his cheek. "All right then, pizza and a movie it is," Jason proclaimed. "Just no action movies. They're too ridiculous."

That got a laugh from Tim. When their whole lives were one long action film, of _course_ they couldn't bear to watch movies that got the details wrong. "We'll find something," he said, already feeling better.

…

Lana had just finished reading an email from Kay when her phone rang. It wasn't the usual ring, either. Lana tended not to use individual ring tones for contacts, but a certain someone had a habit of 'borrowing' her phone as often as she borrowed clothes, so the redhead knew who was calling even without hearing the intro to a cover of Fleetwood Mac's _Gypsy_. "Hello, Kala," she answered, laughing.

The young woman she thought of as her oldest daughter—lack of blood relation notwithstanding—replied brightly, "Hi, Lana! Guess what? We just got back from the tour."

"That's wonderful! A whole day early, too. Congratulations, Kala." She leaned back in her desk chair, smiling. While she loved the fact that Kala was pursuing her dream with all the determination she'd inherited from both Lois and Clark, Lana also simply missed her. Having her back in Metropolis was going to be a delight.

"Yes, we tanked up on gas station coffee and drove through the night to save on hotel fees. And thanks, I'm so glad to be back. Much as I love the road, it's good be home again. Speaking of which, are you home?"

Lana's eyebrows went up slightly at that. _Prepare for the invasion of the starving teenager,_ she thought. "Why yes, actually, I am. Why do you ask?"

A pause, and then Kala began, "Well, Mom and Dad aren't home…"

The wheedling tone was so much like eight-year-old Kala that Lana laughed aloud. "Let me guess. Lois and Clark aren't home, there aren't any convenient leftovers at their house, you haven't eaten anything but fast food and snacks throughout the tour, and you're craving some homemade food."

"Busted," Kala admitted.

Lana could just see the expression on her face, Lois' expressive eyes and Clark's sheepish grin. "Come on over. I'll make you lunch."

"Um, I kinda have the band with me. And Dustin too." Oh yes, she knew that tone. Luckily Lana was prepared to entertain. A few years of being swarmed by Jason and Kala had taught her to keep quick, filling meals on hand at all times.

"Bring them all. Where are you?"

A long pause, with some chuckling in the background, and then Kala said, "In the elevator."

That earned her the richest laugh yet. Who couldn't love this silly child? "You can have chips and dip while I make spaghetti. Meat sauce or white sauce, Kala?"

"Oh God, if it's you making it, I'll break my vegetarian vows. Meat sauce. And maybe meatballs too? Pretty please with sugar on top?" Kala was practically drooling into the phone.

Shaking her head, Lana wondered how the girl who could fly to any restaurant in the world wound up in love with her grandmother's spaghetti sauce recipe. "If you're lucky," she teased. "Still have your key?"

"Um, no, it's in my bag in the van. But I'll be at the door in like two minutes."

"I'll see you there," Lana said, and took a moment to pour chips into a bowl and put out a couple kinds of salsa. Teenagers couldn't be expected to wait while a meal cooked; she'd learned long ago to offer appetizers to keep Kala and Jason from ransacking her pantry. Just as she set that down, the doorbell rang.

As usual, the dogs alerted her to the presence of guests. Dusty the beagle bayed, but only once. Narcissa the Doberman made no sound, but when Lana went to the door she found the larger dog standing in front of it, staring , her nub of a tail wagging. "Back up," Lana said crisply, and Dusty bounded excitedly up the hallway, while Narcissa took two steps back and sat down at Lana's side.

She'd no sooner unlocked and opened the door before Kala swept through it and practically dove into her arms. Lana squeezed her tightly; Kala was the one all the parents worried about, but they loved her all the more for her fiery personality. "Welcome home, sweetheart," Lana said, and kissed Kala's hair—which was blue-streaked this week.

"Missed you," Kala said, not pulling away from the hug.

Finally, it became too rude to keep the rest waiting in the hall, and Lana drew away with a smile. "Am I still your favorite evil stepmother?"

"Lana, if you feed us, you can be the evil _queen_, too," Kala teased. "C'mere, guys, meet my stepmom. It's a long story."

Of course Sebast already knew her and crowded in for a hug, and she'd met Morgan so he shook her hand. Dustin got a kiss on the cheek, too; Lana secretly hoped he and Kala would eventually work things out and settle down together. They were very much in love, and even better, they cared deeply for each other.

Meanwhile Kala was pointing out the two new members of the band. "This is our bassist, Robb, and our drummer, Ned. Guys, this is Lana, she's made of awesome. _Oh_, and one more thing," Kala paused, stepping in front of the two newcomers before they could get past the foyer. "Lana here is from Smallville, like Dustin. Remember, he's the progressive younger generation. So she's classic Midwestern American, never goes out of style, just like her clothes. What that means for you, guys, is _no swearing in the house_. I mean it. Also have some freakin' table manners or I'll slug you."

The two new band members started to laugh at that, but Sebast cut in. "She's not kidding. She'll wipe the floor with you if you disrespect the family. And I'll hold her jacket while she does it."

"Charming," Lana remarked, cutting them off. "A speech your mother would be proud of, Kala. Yes, gentlemen, it's a pleasure to meet you. Don't let Kala intimidate you. I've lived in Gotham, Paris, and Milan." She noted without surprise that one boy's head was shaved except for a topknot dyed electric blue, and the other had a safety pin through his ear in lieu of an earring. All the boys were wearing more eyeliner than she normally did, and Kala had obviously changed hurriedly from concert wear, as her own makeup was worthy of the stage.

"But you always come home to Smallville," Dustin pointed out.

"Don't we all?" Lana asked him, and Dustin hugged her.

She let the kids hover around her breakfast nook, where the chips and dip had been set out, and told Sebast, "You know where everything is, so I'm putting you in charge of drinks. Kala, get the meatballs out of the fridge, would you?"

"I drive all night to come see you, and you put me to work?" Kala pleaded, with sad eyes worthy of the beagle currently weaving between everyone's legs in hopes of a treat or some attention. Narcissa was more reserved, sitting just out of the way and watching the newcomers.

"That's what kids are _for_, Kala." Lana smirked to her; the two of them had always gotten along well. Except for the times Kala decided to dye Kristin's hair or paint her nails or buy her band t-shirts to sleep in, but even those had been quickly forgiven. As much as she tried to be fierce and intimidating, Kala had a lot of her father's sweetness in her, and Lana had always held a soft spot for that.

"You see what kinda trauma Kala had to go through," Sebast said, getting down the glasses. "I mean really, parents who expect you to _work_ and do _chores_ and entertain company? The horror. If she wasn't nineteen we'd call DCS right now."

"Hush, you," Lana warned. "I'm _feeding_ you, remember?"

"Yes, ma'am. A pleasure to serve, ma'am," Sebast said quickly, and all of the kids laughed.

Spaghetti and meatballs was easy to put together, and quick, too. Lana let the kids' conversation drift over her as she and Kala arranged the meal. Apparently the multi-band tour had been good to them all, as they talked like old friends.

In the beginning, Lana had had her doubts about Kala's plans to pursue a music career. Clark had badly wanted his daughter to go to college like her brother, and Lana had been inclined to feel the same. Kala had talked her around to it eventually, however, and it seemed to have been a good choice. Even if nothing came of it in the end, Kala had followed her dreams, and Lana could respect that. She'd done much the same thing, setting out to become a fashion designer, and it had paid off for her.

She and Kala worked together in familiar comfort, Kala trotting out to the terrace to pluck some fresh basil leaves for the sauce. When she came back in, Lana asked her, "So what's the plan now?"

"Get an album together," Kala replied. "Also the boys are going to try to rent a house in the suburbs, and we're all going to get part-time jobs, and we'll take as many gigs as we can find, paying or not. The important thing now is exposure."

"I thought you already had enough songs for an album," Lana said, remembering all the time Kala and Sebast had spent poring over lyrics.

"Yeah, we do, but now that we have a full band, we've got to actually practice them until they're perfect, and then we have to produce an actual album. That takes studio time, and it's expensive. Cheaper here than in L.A., but that's like saying foie gras is cheaper in France."

Lana smiled. Kala sometimes seemed like the impulsive one, but she had definite plans. "So you're looking to rent a house, hmm? Need any help with that?"

"If you know a good realtor, that'd be awesome," Kala replied. "We should be able to swing the security deposit and stuff. Besides, Mom and Dad would squawk if you financed us."

"It's only money," Lana teased, but she understood. Clark and Lois didn't want either of their kids overindulged. The money Lana had set aside in their trust funds was a resource that could serve them all their lives, if they tended it carefully. Learning to handle that money helped both of them be more responsible adults, just as not having access to the principal kept them from being tempted to blow it all.

"We're good," Kala assured her with an infectious grin.

Lana reached out and rumpled her hair at that. Such easy confidence was a joy to see in Kala especially, given how her sixteenth year had gone. Now if only things between her and Dustin would work out, then Lana could stop worrying.

"So where is everyone staying tonight?" she asked.

"We'll get a hotel room for the guys, and Morgan, Sebast, and I are staying at home," Kala replied.

That made Lana grin. She was never happier than when she could help someone else. "Well then, I'll save you some trouble. We have a guest bedroom and a sleeper sofa here. Gentlemen, just let me call my husband and let him know, but I'm certain he'll agree to it."

"Aw, Mrs. White, you don't have to," Dustin began.

Lana cut him off, pointing the wooden spoon she'd stirred the sauce with toward him. "I could never show my face in Smallville again if I didn't offer you three boys a place to stay, so don't argue with me."

"I'm starting to want to see this town," Robb said.

"Me, too," Ned added. "Sounds interesting."

Kala laughed at that, her eyes sparkling. "Wait 'til you meet my dad, then."

…

After a thoroughly enjoyable lunch and a much-needed nap (on Lana's sleeper sofa, because she was too Midwestern to let him _or_ Dustin sleep in the master bed with Kala), Sebast called his parents' house to let them know he was in town. "The van's parked somewhere good and cheap, can you pick me up from the Whites' place?" he asked.

His father muttered about it, but said he'd take care of it if Sebast took the subway out of the most congested part of town. Twenty minutes later he was standing at the agreed-up corner, suitcase in hand, feeling like a hitchhiker. Hopefully it would be Mami who came to pick him up. Papi would have too much to complain about, starting with Sebast's hair—longer than it had been when he'd left—and his eyeliner, which was smudged as hell. Sooner or later he'd get around to Sebast's fashion sense—"Why you dress like an undertaker, _mijo_?"—and his favorite topic of all: "When you gonna make an honest woman of that Kala, ay?"

On the one hand, his parents' persistent denial of his gayness made his life easier. He didn't get the lectures and the freakin' Santeria _intervention_ his one cousin had gotten. But it irritated the hell out of him, the way they ignored what was obvious to anyone with three functioning brain cells. He'd once made Kala snort soda out of her nose by saying that his father would still ask when he was going to marry _her_ even if he had photographic evidence of that one time backstage with _both_ of the male ballet dancers in their grade.

Luckily, it wasn't his father who pulled up to the curb. Unluckily, Mikey was driving the sedan, with Mami riding shotgun. Zynthiana Vélez had a suspiciously wide-eyed look to her, and Sebast hesitated before throwing his bag in the back. "Oh, shit, you're old enough to drive now?" he said.

"Yeah, got my learner's permit," Mikey said. "Get in, bro, we'll take the long way home."

"Bitch, please, I been on the road for six months. Take me to home food and a bed or I'll cut you."

"You watch your mouth, Sebastiáno!" his mother scolded.

He sighed. "Mami, why you let him drive?"

"He's got to practice," she replied. "You don' want him to run into a bus or something, do you?"

"Like anybody can miss a damn bus. It's not like a scooter, Mami. Why I gotta be the guinea pig anyway?" Still, he got in the car, shut the door, and buckled up.

"I missed you too," Mikey laughed, and pulled back out into traffic with only the briefest of glances into his blind spot. Luckily the oncoming sedan was going slowly and braked to let him in, though the driver honked.

"_Madre de Dios_!" Zynthiana and Sebast yelped in unison. Mikey, of course, rapped out the rhythm to 'Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits' on his horn, and Zynthiana promptly slapped him on the ear. "Michael Antonio, don't you _ever_ do that again! You can get a ticket in Puerto Rico for that!" The notes had a much different meaning on the island, a very insulting one.

"Mami, we're not _in_ Puerto Rico!" Mikey protested, and she smacked him again for talking back.

Sebast couldn't help it. He started laughing. Five minutes back with his family, and everything was perfectly normal and right with the world. "I never thought I'd say this, but I missed you _loco_ people."

"Watch who you're calling _loco_, _mano_," Mikey said. "I'm not the one wearing last night's eyeliner."

At that Zynthiana turned around for a better look, and frowned. "I swear I don't know why she lets herself be seen in public with you." She didn't have to say who 'she' was; as far as the Vélez family was concerned, Sebast and Kala had been a couple for five years, whether they knew it or not.

"Because I let her borrow my eyeliner if she breaks hers?" Mikey, who knew better, laughed so hard he almost missed a red light, and threw all of them forward against their seat belts. "Oh, God, we're all gonna die," Sebast groaned.

…

Later that evening, Cassie dropped by the Lane-Kent penthouse. Jason was already there; he'd texted her that Kala was home a day earlier than expected, and of course he'd rushed through his homework to see her. Cassie had smiled to read that text. Jason's adoration of his twin sister was profound, something that might've made other girls jealous. Cassie sometimes wished she'd grown up with a sister, but that was it. She had two pretty awesome sisters of her own, now.

Jason had let her know that Kala was alone, the rest of her band settled in at their own homes or in temporary lodging for the night, so Cassie made her landing on the balcony and knocked on the French doors. She saw Jason coming to open them, but Kala beat him to it. It wasn't as if the two girls had never met before, Kala ducking in to help out from time to time, but this was the first time Cassie had ever seen her in civvies and minus her domino. "Hey there," Jason's twin said brightly, and before she even crossed the threshold added, "So I hear you're dating my brother."

"Yeah, I am," Cassie replied, just as lightly. She'd been forewarned about Kala's tendency to chase off her brother's girlfriends, and took a moment to study the other girl. They'd never met out of uniform before, and Cassie had only ever seen her in a mask. As she walked in, she noted the iridescent violet lipstick, the artsy eyeliner, and the crushed velvet dress paired with spiky heels. Kala looked almost dressed for a date, but as a Goth singer, this was probably her 'normal' look. The photos Cassie had seen of her shows had been much more involved.

The frank appraisal got a mischievous grin from Kala, one brow quirking up. Arms crossed, responding in kind, she drawled, "Well, just so you know, there are some ground rules. One, if you turn out to be a spy for Luthor, then I'm kicking your ass."

And her brother played directly into her hands. "Kala!" Jason groaned. "Give me a break on this one, please? There's no point in you acting like a pitbull this time. We both _know_ who she _is_. _Diana_ knows her, for crying out loud. Lay off. " He shot Cassie an apologetic look, but she waved him off.

"If I ever hire on with someone like Lex Luthor, you have my permission and encouragement to kick my ass," she replied, laughing.

"Good answer. I'll call that one a pass. See, Jase, I'm being lenient this time." Kala smirked. "Two, don't be a fangirl. There's really nothing that makes dinner more awkward than that. Dad might be Superman, but Can-Head here is Super-_dork_, and I have photographic evidence. Like about nineteen years-worth. Not all things he knows about either."

Cassie couldn't help laughing as Jason spluttered a protest. "Trust me, I worked with him for a long time before we started dating. Your brother's pretty awesome, but we're too good friends for me to fangirl over him."

"Yeah, okay. That's a pass on round two then. For the record, I think he's actually pretty awesome, too. I just don't tell him much because it would kill his need to be humble," Kala admitted. And then her smile grew positively wicked. "Last rule: we're twins, so we share _everything_. Got it?"

And that must be Test Number Three, from her boyfriend's reaction. Jason groaned loudly, and grabbed Kala around the neck, trying to give her a noogie. Kala shrieked and slapped at him, kicking his shins as he moved to scoop his sister up. "Ow! Ow, you big dork! Stop it, Dopey!"

Cassie just laughed at them both, until Kala managed to wrench herself around to grab Jason and throw him to the floor. From another room came a stern, "No powers in the house!" in a voice Cassie knew well—one for whom being a fangirl was completely justified.

That was enough to stop the twins in mid-tussle. "Sorry, Daddy," Kala called back contritely, and Jason gave her the stink-eye as he got up.

"Cassie, I'm sorry. She does that all the time."

Kala was running a hand through her hair, giving him an arch look right back. "No one said you had to pick me up like a caveman, Lizardboy!"

"Hey, no big deal," Cassie replied with a shrug. "Themyscira and all, it's not a shock. Besides, sharing is caring, right?"

Jason just stared at her, dumbfounded, while Kala smirked. "Well you know with Amazons, it's practically part of the image."

The blonde couldn't resist teasing back. Now that there was a chance to actually talk to her, Jason's sister was actually pretty hilarious. "Can't let our brand down."

"Don't egg her on," Jason said, looking perplexed.

"What makes you think she's egging me on?" Kala retorted. "Maybe you stole one of my girlfriends back in high school, so now I'll steal one of yours."

Cassie cut in with, "Nah, I wouldn't let her steal me, rock star or not. We'd just work out a timeshare. After all, twins share _everything_." She figured wit and sass would serve her better than politeness with Kala.

By then Jason looked thoroughly confused. His twin, however, tipped her head back and laughed. "_You_ are officially Kala-approved," she said, offering a hand for a high-five. "You're actually as cool out of uniform as you are in. Maybe Dopey managed to get something right this time." Cassie slapped her palm, grinning.

Parental approval was important, but a twin sister could _really_ make her life hell if they didn't get along.

…

Kala woke up early the next morning, as usual, and slipped out of bed. She pulled on pajama bottoms underneath her nightgown and headed into the hall toward the living room. The apartment was still dark, and out of habit she tuned in to listen. Jason's heartbeat, slow and sleepy, came from his room across the hall. In the master bedroom, Mom's was equally soothing, the intrepid reporter still fast asleep. Two quicker beats came up the hall toward her as Chewie and Bagel approached, tails wagging rapidly. They weren't whining, though, so they'd already been out.

That meant the only other morning person in the household was awake, which didn't surprise Kala much. She snagged a muffin out of the kitchen and went out to the balcony, checking carefully with telescopic vision. The sky was beginning to lighten, the stars fading, and Kala's internal clock told her the sun would be up in mere minutes. Already the eastern horizon glowed.

She wouldn't miss this moment for the world. No one else was awake and looking in this direction, so Kala took off, soaring high above the city. As always, the pure joy of flight thrilled her. The only thing that came close was singing on stage, her voice the power cable connecting her to the immense generator that was the audience.

Five miles above Metropolis and out of the way of commercial airline flight paths, Kala came to a hover beside her father, who hung in the air with his cape rippling behind him. As always, pride filled up her chest just knowing he was her dad. She'd never forget how she had first felt when she realized where the other half of her heritage came from. Her Dad the hero. He looked over at her then and smiled. "Good morning."

"It will be," Kala said, still nibbling her muffin as she returned the smile. Any moment now, the sun would rise. Actually the earth would turn enough that the first rays of sunlight spilled across them; Kala had been in a position to see that quite clearly, something few people other than astronauts ever got to see.

"Just the pajamas?" he asked with a dubious look.

"One, no one's supposed to know that the Blur can fly," Kala told him, grinning. "Two, if anyone's looking they'll think _you're_ holding me up somehow."

He nodded. "Just be careful." That was something they all had to be, all the time. To Kala it was natural to float in midair, but anyone else seeing her could've caused havoc with her father's secret identity. Soon enough they'd be out of range of anyone's eyesight.

The horizon brightened, the sky turning pink and orange and then fiery red. The first slice of impossibly-brilliant gold peeked over the edge, and Kala narrowed her eyes to slits against it. That gorgeous light smacked into her like the waves at the private beach in the Bahamas, only this was a wave that moved through her instead of moving her. Kala tipped her head back and sighed, echoing her father.

For long moments they hovered in the sweet radiance, and then Kal-El shook himself slightly. "Ready?" he asked.

"Always," Kala laughed, and they both rocketed upward. She was allowed to fly pretty much anywhere she wanted unaccompanied, but _this_ she could only do with Dad by her side.

Ten miles, taking a deep breath while passing through the troposphere, and then into the bitter cold of the stratosphere. Here the sunlight was more intense and less filtered, and it gave Kala a fresh burst of energy. She rose higher, thirty miles above the city below, and broke into the mesosphere, which made the sub-freezing stratosphere seem positively balmy.

That was Kala's limit; she'd gone into the ionosphere only once, and then at dire need. The solar radiation she'd absorbed from it had repaired the damage kryptonite had done to her, rectified four days of total sun deprivation, and still left her with an excess charge that took a week to dissipate. No, fifty miles above the earth was just fine for Kala.

From up here, the planet's curvature was clearly visible, and everything below looked so much smaller. Roads, buildings, and boundaries disappeared; at this hour most of the world beneath her feet was a complicated tracery of lights. And to the east, the sun burned in all its magnificence. Kala threw her head back, her eyes tightly shut, her arms outspread, letting that purer radiance soak into her. _Perfect._

Eventually, though, she could hold her breath no longer, and dropped back to breathable atmosphere. Kala hovered in the rising sunlight, comfortable and happy here as she was in few other places. A few minutes later, her father dropped down to her level. They remained in comfortable silence for a long while, until Kala sighed heavily. The last thing she wanted to do was put a damper on this rare moment, but he ought to know and she badly needed the reassurance. "The nightmares are back, Dad."

Kal-El sighed too, reaching out to place a hand on his daughter's shoulder. "Stress, you think?" he asked. They never talked about _what_ she dreamed about—drowning, sometimes, and sometimes the evil green light of kryptonite radiation, and once in a while the voice of General Zod—but he knew she dreamed things that haunted her. And she had always been unwilling to tell him, her expression utterly miserable when she did. Only with Jason did she discuss the content of those dreams, and some not even with him.

Leaning into the touch, not realizing how badly she had needed it, Kala replied slowly. "Stress and … generally feeling like I'm not getting anything useful done. I mean, we have a viable band now, and everything looks good on that front. We're getting closer and closer. But the touring…. It's hard, Daddy. I got a rewards points membership with Hilton so I could stay in Hampton Inns because they're usually pretty good, and now I've memorized the room layout. I got up from a nap at Lana's and was confused because the sink was behind the bathroom door instead of outside it."

"Traveling that much _is_ stressful, but I thought you enjoyed it." Kala loved her father for his patience, for the way he made her feel like he'd take all day to get to the bottom of this with her if that was what she needed.

With the sunlight bright on her face, she could continue. "I do, but it's a lot of work, too. People don't realize that. And … it's not just the tour. I feel like things are coming apart again. Jase and Elise are in college, and all the capes know him and love him. Plus Jason is dating a _demigoddess_ now, and I just broke up with the biggest mistake of my romantic career a couple months ago. I have Dustin, and he's a total catch, but really I'm just a singer who moonlights a little bit. A singer for a garage band. Compared to Jason, Hero to the People and all. Sometimes I wonder what I'm doing with my life is right. I want it, I _really_ want it, but…"

A long pause then, and Kala knew he was thinking. Kal-El rarely answered a serious question quickly, and he pondered this one for long enough that she began to worry about the answer. "You know I wanted you to go to college," he said quietly. "But this is your dream, Kal. This is what you wanted since you were seven years old. It's not going to fall into your lap, you'll definitely have to work at it. But I honestly believe you have the talent and the determination to succeed. And if, after another year, you decide you don't want it, you can go to college like you told me."

"Yeah," Kala sighed. "I know part of it is getting a job, which makes me hate myself a little. But I already went there, remember? I do _not_ want to work retail right now, with the holiday season coming up soon. I don't really want to work food service, either, it's more hell than retail. I know it sounds really petty, but sometimes it's too hard to live a life that mundane. Then again, what are you going to do without a college education? So, yeah, walking in circles. Not sure what I'm going to do in that corner."

"What about Dustin?" Kal-El asked.

She chuckled. "Yeah, him too. Dad, you know I love him. I love Dustin _so much_. I mean, he's basically the perfect guy. Who else would get on a plane and join up with the tour just because he heard I was stressed and depressed? With no expectation of us going out, either. But I'm so afraid I'm going to lose him. He's going to try staying in the suburbs, but … Smallville will always be home to him. Remember the last time he stayed, that one summer? He was so unhappy. And Smallville is never going to be more than a short-term safe haven to me. I just can't live in that world all the time. We both know that."

Kala loved Smallville, and not just because some of her favorite people lived there. There was a sweetness and simplicity there that recharged her batteries. However, she knew she couldn't live there. Every visit resulted in months of gossip, and Kala was too much an iconoclast to ever settle down and fit in. She would chafe at the restraints and want to change things, which ironically would ruin everything she liked about Smallville if she succeeded, and frustrate her endlessly if she failed.

"I'd love to see you and Dustin happy together for a long time," Kal-El told her, squeezing her shoulder slightly.

Kala let herself drift sideways until she was pressed up against him, his arm around her shoulders. "Me too. I just … I don't think it's gonna be easy for me. Not like Jase. He's always known what he wants and how to get it. He knows who he is and who he wants to be."

"Jason doesn't know _that_ well," her father corrected. "That's one of those things you've always thought about him, honey, and you've always had a hard time seeing clearly. The one thing he wanted most walked away from him. And he's had to make a lot of little changes while you were gone."

The one thing was Elise, of course. Kala sighed again. "Yeah, I know It sucks and I hate it that Elise had to go, but she had good reasons."

"She did. Elise has her own life. Who knows where it will lead her? My point is, Jason's trying to find himself, too. You're not alone in this, I promise. Kala, you're only turning twenty in a month. You have time, still. Be easier on yourself." Kal-El turned and kissed her hair. "I didn't know quite who I was at twenty, you know. Neither did your mother. It takes time, sweetheart. It takes time for _anyone_."

Kala let the sunlight and her father's hug warm the lingering chill of her last nightmare, which had been this morning. The sea again, the cold unforgiving sea with her hands bound and Luthor's laughter ringing in her ears. The thought made her lip curl stubbornly; she would _not_ let fear rule her. Although there was one thing left that she _did_ fear….

"Daddy?" she said hesitantly, unaware how much she sounded like her six-year-old self.

"Yes, munchkin?" he asked, and Kala chuckled at the old nickname.

She got serious again, though, to ask her question. "Even if I'm not able to be out there with you and Jase or going to a fancy university like Lizardboy, is it okay? Are you still proud of me, even if I'm just a dive-bar singer right now?" Kala ignored the urge to allow her eyes to mist over. Even if she wasn't what her Dad had planned these days, she still needed to hear it.

Kal-El looked at her steadily, and then kissed her forehead. "You are precious and wonderful to me, Kala. You're brave, you're smart, you're _always_ funny, and you've got the guts to chase your dreams. Of course I'm proud of you."

That eased the worst of her worries, and she snuggled into his side lovingly. "Thank you, Daddy. I needed that."


	16. On Knife's Edge

Talia strode through the halls of her father's compound in the Iranian mountains, walking at his side and listening carefully. Her eyes were always alert for any potential threat even here in their stronghold, and her mind presently whirled at a pace that her serene expression belied. She had been home from London less than a day, and had much to catch up on. Ra's al Ghul had tolerated her absence without much complaint, but he would brook no further delays now that she was back under his thumb where she belonged.

"Our assets in northern Afghanistan are being compromised," Ra's al Ghul told her. "Find out who, and why, and deal with them appropriately."

She already had an idea of who and why, just given the location. American interests in the region were trying to stop the poppy trade which fed some of the biggest narcotic cartels in the world, and the local extremists were trying to take over that same lucrative trade to fund their exploits. The interaction of the two was interfering with the peaceful current of business—and the steady flow of money into al Ghul coffers. All that remained was to determine if her hunch was correct, and make an example of the fools who thought they could rob the Demon. The Americans could be distracted, but the extremists understood only bloodshed. "It will be done within the week," she replied confidently.

Ra's continued without questioning her. "The Kazakh cell grows fractious. Eliminate them, if you must, though I prefer a more conservative solution."

Unsurprising. It was more than time to remind the Kazakhs who their master was. That particular group was bold, fearless, and extremely competent; a pity to waste them for some minor insubordination. "I will handle that personally," Talia said after a moment's consideration. An appearance by their leader's right hand—who happened to be a woman, and who also happened to be capable of putting down any five of their best men in under three minutes—would remind them of their loyalties. For a while, anyway. Eventually a lasting solution would have to be found, or that group would need to be reorganized.

"The Korean situation has been resolved satisfactorily, and we've successfully brokered the Pakistani arms deal," Ra's told her, and Talia nodded. She had made the arrangements in both situations before leaving for Gotham. Ra's continued, "Our investments in Europe are holding steady. I expected more profitability."

That was the legitimate side of their commerce, of which Talia had near-total control. Not even Ra's could equal her business acumen. It was also her cover for her recent absence; some things were better handled from London, where she was known as a ruthlessly competent CEO. Confidently, Talia replied, "We are playing the long game in regards to the stocks. Profits will increase slowly but steadily over the next year. I do not intend to get caught in another market crash if American financial systems fail again. The British and European industries are much more stable, if less likely to yield sharp increases."

Ra's nodded, pacing gravely with his hands clasped behind his back. They had pulled out of the American banking industry months before the last financial meltdown, missing out on some spectacular gains in the final days of the housing bubble—but also missing the terrible plummet, when entire fortunes had been lost overnight. When it came to money, Ra's trusted his daughter completely. It was perhaps the only endeavor in which he did so.

Now he said, "It also appears that our associates in Serbia are having some difficulty." At that, her blood ran cold. Jason Todd had last been sighted by her trackers on the Serbian border, and he had a tendency to cause difficulties for mobsters. But why would he choose to interfere in their business?

Jason had disappeared from Talia's London safe-house just over a week ago, without a word or a note or any hint whatsoever that he was thinking of deserting her. He'd hadn't been taken against his will, because any kidnapping attempt would've left severe property damage and many bullet-holes. So he'd simply … left, of his own volition, and with no immediate explanation for having done so.

Talia had been surprised by that, and very little surprised her, especially about someone she'd studied so thoroughly. She and Jason had been together near-constantly since she'd rescued him from Gotham, with her watching over him as he healed. Jason was an impetuous, impulsive young man, but she would have thought he would at least tell her if he decided to move on. They were far more than mentor and protégée, after all, and he'd shared her bed consistently for weeks. That alone was enough to keep other men docilely at heel.

Of course there had to be a reason. She'd looked to see _why_ he would have left even as she'd ordered men to track him. The answer was in her computer, which was set to log every keystroke and action by the user. Jason had booted it up while she was out, having somehow acquired her password. It was time to go to biometric security on every device, but she hadn't thought the laptop was at any risk. Talia hadn't even known Jason was second-guessing her. Then again, she should've expected it. The Lazarus pit did tend to cause paranoia. Once he'd gotten access, he'd rummaged around for a bit and then copied a file to an external drive. _His_ file. The one that contained everything she knew about him, and everything that had been done since she'd found him.

Talia supposed Jason had taken offense to that. As if she _wouldn't_ have all available data on him. He was quite the mystery, and until recently no one else had known he was even alive. It only made sense to keep all the salient facts at her fingertips. He likely saw things differently, and with the way the Lazarus pit had quickened his temper, it might just have been reason enough to start a war.

_I cannot protect you from Father if you insist on getting in his way,_ Talia thought worriedly. Aloud, she spoke with perfect calm, her mind racing for an alternate explanation. "I'll look into it. We know the Serbians have a record of getting their hands dirty. Perhaps they attracted someone's ire."

Ra's was silent for a long moment, long enough that his daughter wondered how much he knew. "Hmm. They are involved in human trafficking, as of the last report from our watchers. I prefer not to have to cultivate new contacts simply because these men cannot resist a profit. Perhaps whatever vigilante has noticed their activities can be persuaded to forget."

Human trafficking. That meant women and children for the sex trade. Talia's hopes rose cautiously at that. It was the sort of thing that Jason would investigate and destroy, not out of some sense of revenge, but because he could not bear to let it go on. His ethics did not allow him to turn a blind eye to the exploitation of the innocent and helpless. Perhaps, then, it _was_ him, but he had no idea he was causing trouble for the League of Shadows. That was the best possible explanation, if Jason was involved.

Musingly, she replied, "Perhaps. Or perhaps we might let the Serbian mob fall, and be replaced by their rivals, whom we can ensure are deeply in our debt by the time they rise to power. They might be more manageable, and more tolerable, than the present gangster scum we work with."

"As you see fit," Ra's told her lightly. That tone meant he had no idea of Jason's potential involvement—she hoped. So far as her father was concerned, the boy had stolen from him: money, Talia's time, and most damningly, the rejuvenation of the Lazarus pit. Ra's might be willing to ignore the rest, but the theft of the Lazarus pit could not be forgotten, and he would always seek repayment in the form of Jason's life. Something Talia could _not _allow him to take.

They walked on; this place was sprawling, and had been added onto over the years, resulting in almost labyrinthine corridors. Ra's had no intention of remodeling. The current floor plan would confuse any intruders long enough for the guards to dispose of them at their leisure. He and Talia were accustomed to it, and could have navigated the entire compound blindfolded if necessary.

This particular hallway had one wall made up almost entirely of one-way mirrors, looking out into the main training room. They were halfway down it when Ra's said curtly, "Stop obsessing about the boy, Talia."

Those words startled her; Jason Todd had been on her mind a moment ago, and she could not let her father guess how often she thought of him. Not if she wanted to keep him safe. But he wasn't the boy he meant, and she knew it almost immediately, a hot flush of anger rising to her cheeks.

…

Elise woke up feeling groggy, and shook her head to clear it. She immediately noticed two things: one, she wasn't in her dorm, and two, she was sitting in a chair. Well, kind of stuck in it somehow. Wondering how the heck she'd fallen asleep sitting up, Elise tried to lift her arms.

They wouldn't come up, and then she woke up all the way. She was _bound_ to the chair, her arms and legs and waist secured to it. Elise looked around her wildly, trying to figure out where she was. The details of the room were invisible to her; a bright bare bulb swung over the chair, casting her in a pool of brilliant light and hiding the rest of the room in shadow.

Now she remembered. Stepping into her room and hearing a faint hissing, seeing the unobtrusive little canister right before the sleeping gas took hold. Elise had been kidnapped. Her heart started to race. "Hello?" she called, not expecting an answer. She just wanted an idea of how big the room was, based on the echo or lack thereof. Maybe that would tell her something about who had taken her.

"Hello, Miss Thorne." That reply, obviously from a voice scrambler, freaked Elise right out. It _sounded_ like it was right in front of her somewhere, but all she saw was blackness outside the ring of light.

Elise took a deep breath, and tried to put on a jovial tone. "Hey, look, I think there's some sort of misunderstanding here. I'm nobody important."

"The only misunderstanding is yours. You underestimate your importance." That voice, it was impossible to guess age or gender or anything else. This was no cheap spy-shop scrambler, it was the real deal, rendering the speaker's voice completely unrecognizable.

_Okay. Breathe. Think. How are you gonna get out of this? There has to be a way. Maybe it is just a mistake._ But even as she coached herself, Elise knew it was no mistake, and knew exactly why the mysterious person in the shadows had captured her.

Aloud, though, she only said, "Seriously, I think the only person who's gonna miss me is that girl in my chem class who stayed home sick and needs my notes. So really, you've got the wrong girl."

"Are you or are you not Miranda Elise Thorne?" the voice asked.

For a half-second she thought of denying it, but remembered in the nick of time that she'd already answered to the name. "Yeah, that's me. Second-year chem major. No one special."

"You're very special. To someone." The voice let that ominous phrase hang in the air for a moment, and Elise bit her tongue not to reply, just listening. She thought she heard a faint hum, like a motor. What _that_ could be, she didn't want to guess, her mind helpfully presenting her with images from gory horror films. Why the _hell_ she'd ever seen that one about the murder club and the backpacking teenagers, she couldn't possibly figure out now.

"Well, all right, to my parents, but they're in New Zealand. And we're not rich and famous," Elise said nervously. She wouldn't bring up Corrin if she could help it. Whatever she was mixed up in, he couldn't get dragged into it.

Her answer was a low laugh, eerily distorted. "I had someone a bit more _super_ in mind."

At that, Elise froze. Oh, _shit_.

…

As they walked, Talia had turned without even consciously realizing it, looking through the one-way mirrors at the training in progress. Given what she saw there, her gaze had been captured and transfixed. Beyond the glass, a young boy somewhat fairer than Talia—but otherwise strongly resembling her—faithfully practiced his sword katas under the watchful eye of a skilled swordsman. Most children of his tender age would have considered running without falling down to be a feat, but _he_ was sure-footed and agile as a cat. He already handled a wooden practice sword with surety, and he was just about to turn four. This boy had the strength of both halves of his lineage coursing through his veins, and as the heir of both Ra's al Ghul and the Batman, he had been exemplary from the moment of his birth. He was called Damian, and he had been bred to rule as his father the Detective refused to do.

More important than all of that, however, he was _Talia's_ child, and her gaze sought him out even when she couldn't go to him. Once upon a time, she had thought she understood what it was to love completely, fiercely, and unconditionally. The moment Damian's eyes focused on her, however, Talia had realized just how wrong she was. If the love she'd felt before had been like diving in the ocean, this was like swimming along congratulating herself on how deep she'd gone, and suddenly finding a drop-off that descended into unknowable dark blue depths. And then falling, willingly, gladly, into a love that frightened her with its intensity. For Damian, she would remake the world if she had to.

When Ra's would have walked on after that curt remark, Talia came to a full halt, forcing him to turn and face her. She lifted her chin and said with cold determination, "Father, 'the boy' is my _son_."

Ra's gave a small, irritated sigh. "He is in good hands. In any case, he cannot see you watching over him with maternal pride, and you do not have the time to offer advice or criticism at this moment. You have been gone too long already, Talia." A hint of reproach in that; perhaps he knew what she'd been up to in London, tending and tracking Jason instead of just tending to business.

Likely he did. Talia was rarely able to keep secrets from her father. But as long as she continued the work and didn't allow her side projects to interfere with what _he_ considered important business, Ra's al Ghul was willing to turn a blind eye to her concerns. At least, up to a point. If he pressed the issue, she generally gave in.

For the most part, Talia yielded to his judgment. He was, after all, vastly older and wiser and more objective than she was. Ra's had proven his superior reasoning to her many times. But on this matter, she would not surrender. Still giving him a confrontational stare, she retorted, "Caring for my son—and wishing to see him after an absence—is not obsession, Father. Damian is my only child."

"And he is my only heir," Ra's replied, with a touch of warning in the tone.

Talia held herself perfectly still as only one trained by ninjas could, not even the motion of breath betraying her. She might have been a statue cunningly painted to appear alive, and a casual observer would have complimented the artist on the portrayal of the look of challenge in her eyes.

For a long moment they faced off, with the object of their quarrel completely unaware of them. At last Ra's al Ghul sighed. "My daughter, you know well I can refuse you nothing you _truly_ desire. Go to the boy, then. Your mind will not be at ease until you have spoken with him."

He had compromised; so would she. The balance of power must always be maintained. "Let us finish this first," Talia said in conciliatory tones. "I must know what is to be done, even if I will see my son before I begin it."

His eyes narrowed very slightly; at the moment there were no traces of crow's feet at the corners, but those minute signs of aging came sooner and sooner each time. Ra's had perhaps a year before he would need to use the Lazarus pit again, Talia guessed.

"Very well," he finally said, and turned back to resume their walk—which forced her to catch up, but so be it. "I shall tell you what we've recently learned of our friends in Australia."

Talia's mouth turned down in a scowl; Lex Luthor and his plots were not topics calculated to ease her mind. By her reckoning, they should have simply seized his laboratory once they knew he'd built it directly over a potential Lazarus pit site. But Ra's was cautious, and he had a use in mind for the brilliant American.

Still, news of their temporary allies would be useful when Luthor inevitably tried to betray them. Talia kissed her fingertips and touched them to the glass for one last look at her son, before hastening to follow her father and devoting her full attention to the work.

…

"Is this really necessary?" Lex muttered, zipping up the Tyvek suit.

Mercy handed him a mask; she was already suited up, only her eyes showing between the bright white Tyvek and the bluish mask. "Yes," she replied, her voice muffled. "We don't need any accidental transmission, given the side effects encountered in the early trials. Also, if the scant evidence we have on the … naturally occurring uplifts is correct, their immune systems are fragile at this stage. We don't want them to acquire anything from _us_."

"It seems like overkill," Lex replied, but he had to see this evidence for himself.

Mercy picked up the box at her feet and walked ahead of him through the airlock into the inner lab. A strange squeaking sound immediately assaulted his ears, almost too high-pitched to be from the species it was supposed to be.

Contained within a separate, secure compartment in the center of the room was Project Uplift's seventh trial. The surrogate whined, looking at them with beseeching eyes, but Mercy and Lex both ignored her. It was the three offspring they'd come to see. "Just three," Lex mused. "I thought they had more."

"Any genetic fault that cropped up early enough would cause the fetuses to be re-absorbed," Mercy informed him. "There were also two stillborn. Of these three, we have reason to believe one is more affected by the gene therapy than the others." Saying that, she opened the mini-airlock and reached in with double-gloved hands.

The tiny scrap of life she lifted out mewled in protest, and Lex gasped in surprise. He hadn't seen this one for its two siblings. "Is that a natural color for the breed?" he asked, holding out his hands.

Mercy deposited a tiny, newborn puppy into his gloved palms. Solid white with pink, folded-down ears and a pink-and-black spotted nose, it squeaked in dismay at the handling. "In some lines, yes, but not in this one."

In the cage, the black and tan shepherd bitch whined again, staring intently at the puppy that had been taken from her side. Lex held the tiny animal up, ignoring its squeals and the increasing distress of the dam. "A male, hmm? And does he show any other signs besides the unusual coloring?"

"Yes," Mercy said, and opened the small lead box at her feet. The puppy immediately began to thrash in Lex's hands, squalling, and the shepherd in the cage bolted to her feet, barking loudly. Mercy covered the kryptonite again and the pup subsided, but the bitch kept her nose pressed to the glass, whining louder.

"Interesting that the dam reacted," Lex mused, examining the puppy. Its eyes were still closed, and its limbs were still more stumpy attachments to the pudgy body. Other than the color, there was no way to tell that this animal had Kryptonian DNA spliced into its chromosomes.

"It's not the kryptonite that bothers her, it's the pup's distress," Mercy said. "Speaking of which, we'd best put him back. We can't allow him to catch a chill."

Lex laughed and handed the puppy back. "You're becoming positively _maternal_, Mercy. Or is that Project Scion's fault?"

"Hardly," she laughed, placing the puppy back into the cage with his worried mother. "Although it's worth mentioning that this litter was spliced with Scion's DNA."

"Is that a factor in the trial finally taking, do you think? And why dogs, of all creatures?" All their previous attempts to create Kryptonian hybrids had failed, resulting in spontaneous abortion or fatal birth defects. When the serum to grant Kryptonian powers to humans continued to fail, Lex had been forced to pursue other means of wedding his foe's powers to his own intellect. All gene splicing tests had also failed, until this one. None of the higher primates, or even humans, had been successful in the lab.

Mercy shrugged. "We used his DNA before, on the chimps and in one of the human trials. Dogs are interesting, genetically. Their morphology is very plastic, allowing for a vast range of appearances. In no other creature would something as different as a Chihuahua, a poodle, and a Great Dane be considered the same species, but they are all dogs. Perhaps there's something about that that allows them to accept this level of interference."

Lex looked at the little canine family thoughtfully. "Now we just have to wait and see if the litter survives to maturity." Something occurred to him then, and he asked, "Do the other puppies react to kryptonite? I hadn't noticed."

"No, they don't," Mercy said. "Preliminary DNA scans are underway, but I suspect the retrovirus didn't work on them. The white one is likely the only success."

He nodded. "If they don't have any of the Kryptonian genes, destroy them. I'm only interested in the white one. I also want him cloned at the earliest opportunity."

"Of course," Mercy replied.

They headed out of the lab, Lex's mind spinning. How could he translate this success into practical terms? The end goal was opening the way for Kryptonian powers to be distributed among a select few humans. Including himself, of course. But that was no reason why the intermediate stages shouldn't be profitable in their own right.

At the airlock, he smiled and looked back, seeing the tiny puppy snuggled up to its mother's belly as she licked its fur soothingly. "It needs a code name. Something more specific than Project Uplift."

Mercy looked thoughtful, but it didn't seem that she had any ideas in mind. Then Luthor grinned as the perfect moniker occurred to him.

"Let's call him Krypto."

…

Elise managed a nervous laugh, still trying in vain to see _something_ in the blackness of the room. "Look, um, I'm from Metropolis, yeah, but I don't actually _know_ Superman. I mean, he saved my bacon once, but that doesn't make us buddies. You know? So whatever you've got going on here, it's not going to work."

Again that soft mechanical whirring noise, and Elise's flesh crawled. What the _hell_ was that? Some kind of motor, obviously, but for _what_? "You know more than you're telling," the digitized voice said from the shadows. "I commend your bravery, but you should know that we'll find out everything we need to know. Eventually."

"I'm sure you will, but not from me," Elise said, managing to make her voice sound angry instead of afraid. "I don't _know_ anything about Superman you couldn't get from a quick Google search!"

"Oh, I think you do," the voice insisted.

Elise's heart was racing, her palms were sweaty, and her mouth was dry. When she swallowed, her throat made a dry clicking noise. _I move all the way to California, get a new boyfriend, haven't even spoken to Jason since his grandmother's funeral, and I __**still**__ get nabbed by some psycho. __**Shit**_. This was a perfect reminder of why Elise had insisted on some distance from their relationship. The longer she spent around Jason, the more she could feel her chances of a normal life slipping away.

"Okay," she said in a small scared voice. "Okay, look. There is _one_ thing I know. But … but you have to promise you won't go after anyone else, okay? They're friends of mine and … I can't let them get hurt because of me."

A long pause greeted that. "I'll consider it. Tell me what you know."

"I…" Elise trailed off into a croak, then asked, "Sorry, my throat's dry. Can I get a glass of water?"

"No." Flat denial; oh well, they must've seen that one before.

She would've crossed her fingers, if it wouldn't have been obvious. "Look, Superman … he's still really close friends with Lois Lane."

Another silence, then a laugh. "Any idiot who reads the _Daily Planet_ knows that, sweetheart. You'll have to do better than that."

Elise sighed shakily. Right now she would've loved to punch Jason Kent right in his adorable smile. "Will you let me go if I tell you everything?" she asked tremulously.

"Of course." A velvety note in the digitized voice now, sensing defeat.

Elise steeled herself for this, likely the hardest thing she'd ever do. "Okay, then. The only thing I really know is that…" She let the silence drag out, hoping her tormentor was listening really closely. Then she took a deep, deep breath.

"…you can _go fuck yourself!_" Elise screamed as loud as she could, tearing in another breath to snarl, "even if I _did_ know anything, you really think _anyone_ in Metropolis would _ever_ give up _Superman_ to some asshole like you?! Go get bent, 'cause you won't get any satisfaction from me!"

Heart hammering and yet obscurely proud of herself, Elise was completely unprepared for the reply she heard. "If that's your final answer, then we're done here." The motor moved away, and suddenly the light overheard went out, plunging the entire room into darkness.

"Hey!" Elise squeaked. Somewhere behind her, a door opened and shut, the sound echoing. "Hey, you're not just gonna _leave_ me here? Are you?!"

Silence answered her, thick silence that seemed to crowd in close. _As much as I wanna beat Jason's butt for getting me into this kind of thing, I wish he was here,_ Elise thought. Anything could be in that darkness. _Anything_. Right now a super-powered overprotective ex would be welcome.

She struggled against the chair, but the bonds were tight, and she couldn't get them loose at all. Then she tried to tip the chair over, but it was bolted to the floor. Trapped, stuck, completely immobile, just _trapped_ here waiting for whatever came next….

"Hey! Hey, can anyone hear me?" Elise shouted, knowing it was futile, knowing she sounded like every stupid teenage girl in a horror movie—oh, but _why_ did she have to think of horror movies at a time like this? Still, it was just something she had to do, something instinct seemed to demand, and she shouted, "_HELP!_" at the top of her lungs until her throat felt sore.

…

Jay Todd was lying on a thin mattress, staring at a water-strained ceiling, in a small room with narrow windows that gave him a lovely view of some kind of factory to one side. Not far away was a trucking company, so he could fall asleep to the soothing whoosh of tires on pavement and the steady beeping of big trucks backing up every half hour or so. This was an apartment, not a hotel, leased short-term for cash with no names asked—just the kind of place he liked. It didn't seem to have roaches, at least, although he'd tossed a spider out the window within minutes of walking in. The building probably had rats, too. He'd seen some big ones running along the gutter outside the factory.

He was holed up in Šećerana, a neighborhood in Zrenjanin, one of the biggest cities in Serbia. A decent base of operations. There was a decent ethnic diversity, with people speaking Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian, Romanian, and German, so his American-accented German didn't grate on the ear the way it would've some other places.

Organized crime in Serbia was nothing like as sophisticated as it was back home. He'd managed to talk his way up to some fairly high places just based on his skills with explosives, and now he was set to bring the whole corpulent, self-indulgent house of cards down. These bastards were funneling women—girls, really—from all over Eastern Europe into the human trafficking trade elsewhere. They lured them in with promises of jobs as maids or nannies, and once they were across the border without passports, the gangsters revealed the _real_ jobs. By then it was too late to turn back.

The worst part was, for some of these women prostitution in massage parlors and casinos was almost better than the lives of grinding poverty they'd led before. Some of them wouldn't have gone home even if they could, caught between debts to their 'sponsors' and shame at what they were doing.

Fuck it. Two weeks ago Jay had been minding his own business, trying to keep his head down and stay away from Talia's trackers. He'd seen a girl who couldn't have been more than fourteen getting off a truck, staggering like a newborn foal from riding in the dark, crowded cargo compartment for God knew how long. Her eyes were like a trapped animal, stunned mute. He couldn't look away from that, and he'd started his investigation of the mob that night. Now he just needed to wait until the heads of the two biggest families met tomorrow night, and he could kick over the first domino in a chain reaction that would ruin them all.

So he lay in his room, smoking and drinking and tapping his ashes into an empty beer bottle. His thoughts kept going back to Gotham. To Bruce. To the absolute shit-storm he'd left back there.

Jay had already come to an uncomfortable conclusion. He'd gone too far in Gotham, let his bloodlust run loose too long. Hell, at one point he would've killed anyone who got in his way, not just the ones who were guilty. Gotham _did_ need a hero who would _really_ clean up its streets, someone who wouldn't just let people off with a slap on the wrist and a trip to Arkham's revolving door. But he hadn't been that hero. Not the way he meant to.

When he'd woken up in London, Jay had let himself believe Talia, believe that he'd won. Let himself believe that maybe, just maybe, he could walk away from his war with the Bat. And of course he had Talia watching over him so attentively, making sure he slept well at night and everything. For a little while he'd thought…

…but that was stupid. She had a _file_ on him, every piece of correspondence between them, notes on _exactly_ how she'd stalled and manipulated him over the last few years. It was enough to make him think about waiting for her with both guns drawn, but in the end he'd just walked out. She'd saved his life, he'd saved hers by not putting a bullet in her head. Jason Todd was no one's fucking _project_.

Of course, Talia had people tailing him, but she'd taught him just a little too well. And he hadn't exactly been a novice at staying undetected when all this started, either. Now he could pretty much disappear at will. Her people had to work from educated guesses to figure out where he was, and as soon as he spotted them on his backtrail, he moved on.

But he wasn't moving on from here until his business with the mob was done. There weren't going to be any more truckloads of girls going through the outskirts of town. Not after the last one he'd liberated.

Jay smoked, looking up at the rusty water stain right over his head. To him, it looked almost like a map of Gotham City. The question was, was Gotham his origin or his destination?


	17. The Distant Rumblings

**Another busy, exhausting week. You don't really realize just how work you do until you go away and you come back and wonder why you're so damn incapable of keeping your eyes open at night. So we were able to recreate the chapter, thank God, plus an extra scene to even things out. Is it as good? Dunno, but I hope so. You're not going to see that much of the family this chapter, fair warning, because we have a perfect storm on the horizon. Keep that in mind as you read this one. Yep, we're up to something. ;)**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

><p>"And why are we working Blüdhaven again?" Jason asked. So far Tim had refused to answer, but persistence tended to pay off.<p>

It turned out that the fifth time might be the charm, in this case. Jason could _feel_ the irritated glare from behind the lenses of Tim's domino. "He's out of town on personal business. _His _personal business, none of ours. Got it?"

"Got it," Jason said mildly. "So you don't know either, then."

Tim made an irritable noise in his throat and pulled out his grapnel, not answering. Dick tended to leap and then shoot, but Tim preferred to have his line attached _before_ he stepped off the edge. It was common sense, from his point of view. Besides, Dick the born aerialist was perfectly comfortable flipping around in midair at ridiculous heights, so it didn't matter so much to him whether he attached his grappling line before he jumped, or after his second somersault.

Jason knew how to use a grapnel, but he didn't usually carry one. He covered the same distance with a single bound and landed sure-footedly beside Tim. When he'd started training, a landing point as narrow as the parapet he'd touched down on would've made him nervous, possibly enough to make him lose his balance, but a summer of Bat-tutelage and three years of running with them had given him more confidence. Besides, Jason knew for a fact that if he fell from this height, only the sidewalk below would get hurt.

Tim referenced his scanner; they were following the frequency of an unobtrusive tracking tag attached to a target's coat. Dick had placed it—at the target's dry cleaner, after hours—and then there'd been an unexpected wait for the target to pick up his clothing. But now they had a reliable locator on one of Two-Face's top lieutenants.

This particular man had begun to operate within Gotham's neighboring city, Blüdhaven, more than in his boss' usual turf, and Dick had wanted to monitor him in case he represented a possible expansion attempt. Jason didn't know that much about their target, really. Tim had the specs, Jason was just providing the invulnerable muscle and the x-ray vision on this trip in case something went wrong.

Not that Tim hadn't brought his own ways of seeing more than the human eye. When they came to a stop, careful to conceal themselves, he adjusted his lenses for infrared, scanning the dark street for body heat. "Target plus two more," he murmured.

Jason quickly found the same men. The two their target was meeting were tall and broad-shouldered, looking like thugs hired for their intimidation factor. Tim aimed a small directional microphone at them and listened intently. Jason's hearing was good enough to pick up a few words, but he was paying more attention to body language anyway. So far this looked like a cordial meeting; no one seemed especially tense.

And then their guy got into an SUV with the two men he'd met. Time for more leaping and grappling—they likely weren't going far. The initial meeting had probably been in the open to insure that both sides didn't bring any extras, and now the real business would be conducted somewhere more private.

"Who do the other two guys belong to?" Jason murmured when they paused again, the SUV below them waiting for a traffic light.

Tim shrugged one shoulder. "No leads. Could be anyone. One of the local families here, or one of Gotham's rogues trying to do business without the rest knowing. My money's on the latter, but it's just a hunch."

"It could even be someone from outside the area looking to make contacts," Jason said, half to himself, and Tim turned his head sharply, scowling. The thought made the hair on the nape of Jason's neck stand up. "We keep hearing about this Injustice Society, after all."

"The last thing we need is for the villains to get organized," Tim growled. Below them, the light turned, and they leaped in unison to the next rooftop.

"Maybe they're just trying to get group health insurance," the Super joked, but his best friend glared at him. Jason sighed. "Seriously, Tim. The League and the Titans hold together in spite of all the drama because we trust each other; because at the end of the day we share the same goals. You really think _these_ guys can pull off the same thing? Maybe in the short-term, yeah, but they'll be stabbing each other in the back inside of a month."

"Some of them are charismatic enough to make it work, for a while," Tim said curtly.

Eventually they ended up at a small bistro, and Tim dropped a couple of listening devices into the airshafts to record the muted conversation of the three men. Unfortunately no one mentioned their bosses; this seemed like an initial meeting, and anything important would be decided later based on impressions made here. Tim was decidedly displeased with the lack of solid intel.

"We found one of their regular meeting places, though," Jason told him, not liking the set of his friend's jaw. "And we still have the tracker on our target."

"True," Tim said, with a hint of lightness in his voice. Jason decided to take that as a good sign.

…

Dick Grayson had called ahead to let her know he was coming over, but when he got to Donna Troy's apartment, she didn't answer the doorbell. He knew there were a dozen likely explanations, but he couldn't help the way his heart dropped into his stomach. _Not Donna, please. She's had enough already. Not Donna, not again._

Luckily he had a key, and let himself in, well-trained gaze scanning for anything out of the ordinary. Everything _seemed_ in its place … then his eyes lit on a mug on the coffee table. Dick picked it up; about a sip's worth of tea in the bottom, and almost room temperature. It had been sitting for a while, then.

The natural inclination was to call out, but Titans didn't necessarily operate under ordinary rules, and Bats, never. Hyper-aware, Dick moved through the apartment, alert for any intruder or any signs of Donna herself. In the back of his mind ran a little pleading mantra to match the sick churning of his stomach.

Only one door in the whole place was closed: the spare bedroom. Suddenly Dick knew exactly where Donna was, and his heart gave a funny little skip at the realization.

Dick sidled up to the closed door, listening. From within came the muted sounds of soft jazz, something low and relaxing. He could picture the little alarm clock radio Donna had; it was a goofy gift he'd given her years ago, a bright blue fuzzy cube with an adjustable-brightness display. That had been the chief quality he'd sought, that and the red glow of the numerals.

Another sound came to his ears then, very faintly: dripping liquid.

…

Elise had no idea how much time had passed. There were no clocks, her watch was gone, and there was no exterior light in the room. Hours, at least, alone in the close darkness. Long enough for her throat to feel dry and raw from screaming for help. Long enough to wonder if her captor was ever going to return. Long enough to realize that probably no one had any idea where she was, and that she might not even be missed for several days, until her next date with Corrin. Long enough to try and remember how many days it took for a person to starve to death, and then to realize she'd die of dehydration long before then.

Long enough for her to come to the extremely uncomfortable realization that she really, _really_ needed to pee. Amazing how such trivial discomforts could overwhelm everything else.

When the door behind her creaked open again, Elise let out a tiny little shriek even though she _wanted_ her captor to return. Anything was better than the endless waiting and the torture of not knowing what was coming next. And yet, she didn't want to sound _too_ eager. So Elise called out in the most caustic voice she could manage, "Hey, just so you know, I drank a quart of water on the way back to my room. So it might be a good idea to let me out of this chair and tell me where the ladies' room is."

"That sounds like a personal problem," the distorted voice replied, seeming faintly amused. The mechanical whirring moved around the room until Elise was sure her captor was right in front of her. She heard a faint tapping sound.

Light burst into being, Elise squeezing her eyes closed with a pained yelp. After so long in the dark, that single bulb above her head hit her retinas like a runaway pulp truck. Muttering curses under her breath, she was eventually able to slit her eyes open … only to see the vaguest silhouette in the shadows before her. "What's wrong with you that you won't show yourself?" Elise challenged. "What, are you uglier than Two-Face or something?"

Low laughter greeted that, the voice digitizer rendering it inhuman. "You've got spirit. I admire that. But I think we've established that insulting me only earns you unpleasant consequences. If a time-out isn't effective, I may have to resort to stronger measures. Do you understand?"

Fear coiled low in Elise's gut, but she couldn't let it show. She had to keep up a tough façade, keep this bastard guessing, and above all not give in, long enough for _someone_ to find her. So she shot back sarcastically, "Yeah, yeah, I've seen enough slasher flicks to get it. Tell me, do creeps like you—oops, sorry, _guys_ like you, I wouldn't want to wound your delicate ego—do guys like you really do the thing where you show your helpless victim a tray of torture implements to intimidate them? I always wanted to know if the movies got that right."

The answer was perfectly level and calm. "No. People like me don't do that sort of thing. We just figure out the best place to apply leverage, and then do so, until we get the results we want." Somehow that cold answer was spookier than some greasy leather-face killer crooning over a table full of saws and scalpels.

Elise swallowed, her dry throat making an audible click. "Right. Okay. I understand."

The digitized voice seemed to have expected that. "Good. Look to your left."

Another light came on, revealing a series of car batteries wired together … with more cables snaking around toward the back of Elise's chair. All of a sudden she realized the cuffs holding her were smooth and cold. Metal? Like an electric chair? "Oh shit," Elise whispered, struggling all the harder to get loose.

"Don't do that. You'll only hurt yourself. Trust me, you're very securely bound." Again that mechanical whir, and the voice added, "If you cooperate, I won't have to shock you."

How much voltage was in those batteries? More importantly, how much _amperage_? And how much was fatal? This wasn't fair! She'd been having a normal day at college, headed back to her room to study, and then suddenly _this_. "What do you _want_?!" Elise shouted, hating the rising shriek of panic in her voice.

"Something simple. Superman's name."

_Oh, shit_, Elise thought despairingly.

…

Roman Sionis—better known as Black Mask—surveyed his legal team. "Whaddya _mean_, eight to ten? I'm not rotting in Blackgate for a damn _decade_!"

"Mr. Sionis, let me appraise you of the situation," the first attorney began. "First of all, it's an election year, and everyone in the justice system from the judges down to the assistant D.A. is keen to show their best face to the public. It's going to be _extremely_ difficult for us to have the charges reduced and the sentence lowered to the level I mentioned. Now, with good behavior you might…."

"No, let _me_ appraise _you_ of _your_ situation," Mask snarled. "I am _paying you_ to get these charges _dropped_. I don't care _how_ you do it. I don't care whose arm you have to twist. But I guarantee you, pal, if I hafta do ten years because your fat ass spent more time knocking back martinis than blowing holes in the prosecution's case, I'll be damn sure to figure out a way to get _you_ locked up with me. Understand?"

The man, new to the team, blanched at the threat. The rest of the lawyers didn't. They were well aware of the sort of man they worked for, and threats didn't move them. They knew Mask was neither stupid nor shortsighted, though he did have a nasty temper.

Some of these men had worked with him for years, and knew that the street-rough language concealed his origins. Sionis was as blue-blooded as that featherhead Wayne, if a good deal smarter. It just pleased him to sound like a gangster. He felt it was a truer measure of his nature than the polished mask he'd been reared to present.

While the attorneys talked amongst themselves and batted terms like 'plea bargain' and 'reasonable doubt' his way, Mask contemplated his legal team. Gotham's gangsters had their own elite legal teams; Dent's were the best, of course, but the Falcones had one hell of a consigliere who'd been a D.A. in some other city, plus a team to back him. Mask's legal boys weren't quite up to that par. Until recently, he hadn't needed them. If that goddamned Red Hood hadn't screwed him over….

Oh, that cheeky little bastard. Black Mask still wanted to get a hold of that arrogant smart-mouthed boy with all his tricks and his rockets and beat some _sense_ into him. Or just beat him bloody, if it came to that. Either way would make him feel better. He'd had to throw away a small fortune on bail just to maintain his present freedom. He'd be damned if he let them lock him up. And to do it without tasting Red Hood's blood? Hell, that was cruel and unusual.

He chuckled to himself at the thought of making that argument in court, but the humor quickly turned bitter. Hood had fucking _used_ him—the biggest gang boss in Gotham, the undisputed master of the street, and Hood had made _him_ a pawn. All to get Batman where he wanted him. The kid's brilliance and audacity had won him some grudging admiration, but Mask couldn't get around being all-out _furious_ with the young maniac. Dammit, this wasn't a _game_, this was real life, and Hood had set him back five years in his own plans. More, if his hotshot legal team couldn't get him off the hook. Hell, the damn kid might even _sink_ him for good if he had to do time over this.

Mask could feel his blood pressure red-lining, and suddenly he wanted nothing more than to take a knife to these suit-wearing chumps who were nattering on about his case like it was some interesting academic challenge. "Boys," he snapped, and they all turned to him—the newest one wide-eyed, the rest calm. "We all know I'm not gonna take the stand. My lovely mug isn't gonna win over any jurors. So you might as well go somewhere else to debate. I've got calls to make."

With the flock of lawyers scattered, Sionis ground his teeth thoughtfully. Maybe if he gutted one of his own defense attorneys, they'd send him to Arkham instead of Blackgate. It was a fallback plan, anyway. In the meantime, he had an idea.

Picking up his office phone and dialing, Mask waited until it was answered and then said in what passed for his most polite voice, "Let me talk to Cobblepot."

The usual runaround for a few minutes, and then that arrogant little tit's voice came on the line. "Roman. Such terrible news. I trust you're dealing with it as best you can? Chin up, and all that?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm handling it," Mask said. God, how he hated the bird-boy and his affected manners. Oswald Cobblepot should've stuck with his nickname. Penguin was a goddamn freak like all the rest of them. The difference was, he tried to deny it, cigars and monocle and fine champagne. He should've just choked down a live goddamn herring in front of a camera, show the world what he really was. The fucking bird puns were enough evidence of a deranged mind. "What would really help me, in my hour of need, y'know, time of trouble and all that, is a little peace of mind."

Penguin chuckled richly. "Whose mind, and how large of a piece?"

"I was being figurative," Sionis ground out. "Listen, Oswald, they say you know everything and can get anything, for the right price. I wanna give you a chance to prove that's true."

The answer came back oozing with oily cheer. "I'd be delighted. What are you seeking, Roman? Perhaps … a certain red helmet, very limited edition? Because that would be _very_ expensive indeed."

"Oh, no," Mask laughed. "If I add that to my collection, I wanna pick it up _myself_. No, all I want is information. This Red Hood character. Who is he, where'd he come from, how'd he get so good that the goddamn _Bat_ can't catch him?"

"Ah, now that is a challenge," Cobblepot said with what sounded like pleasure. Twisted little freak. "I'll see what I can find for you, Roman. And I hope you remain free to take advantage of my research."

"I hope so too," Mask replied, and then hung up after the expected pleasantries. He stretched his neck, hearing a dry pop somewhere. Tension headache coming on. Dealing with the crooks who thought they were upper-crust always managed to piss him off.

Sighing, he rose from his chair. It was time to go see about his operation—what was left of it. Red Hood again. It wasn't enough to steal the merchandise and interrupt the schedule and take over the turf, no, he'd had to kill some of the best operators Mask had. Vicious little bastard.

Only imagining that stupid helmet with a bleeding stump hanging out of it could soothe Sionis' rage.

…

Dick knocked gently at the door. "Hey, Donna?" he called.

From inside the spare room came a startled little yelp. "Dick! You scared me! And you're early—no, wait, you're not." She sounded chagrined at that, but Dick didn't mind at all. Donna continued, "Sorry, I got distracted. I'll open up as soon as I get this in the washer."

"Sure thing," he said, enormously relieved. That Donna was okay was one thing, but that she was doing what she was doing was completely another and deeper sense of relief. When she opened the door a moment later, the chemical smell that seeped out with her would've made him wrinkle his nose, but right now it smelled like normality. Like life finally getting back on track. Donna in the darkroom processing photos was the most reassuring thing he'd run across all week.

The former Wonder Girl had her black hair tied back in a hasty ponytail, and her eyes were still shadowed, but she looked more like herself than she had in months. "Sorry," she said again, smiling apologetically.

Dick swept her into an impulsive hug, and actually startled a laugh out of her. "Best friends are worth waiting on," he told her.

Donna's only reply was a squeeze that spoke volumes. They had known each other from adolescence, when the Teen Titans were still just teens, and they'd been through so much together that Dick at least thought of them as soldiers who'd survived the same war. It was apt.

"What've you been working on?" he asked when they both stepped back after a long moment. "Do I get to see, or do I have to use Bat-powers of espionage?"

She hesitated, and he worried a little at that. "Yeah, you can see. But you won't like it. I've done two series this week. The first one's in the binder on the bookcase. This one … you should go look at the first ones first. Let me get this last one washed and hung before you come in, okay?"

That sounded … un-good. "Okay, I'll go look," he told her.

Donna pecked his cheek with what felt like relief. "I'll only be about ten minutes. Feel free to feed yourself while you're looking through them. You know where everything is." On that note she disappeared back into the darkroom.

When he'd last been here the spare bedroom had still been sitting unused with unopened boxes from the move stacked along the walls. It was good to see Donna putting it in order, and even better to know she'd unpacked her photographic equipment. To the best of his knowledge, she hadn't raised a camera in over a year. Not since the accident.

He'd asked her once, a couple years ago, why she didn't go digital. DSLR cameras took incredible pictures, and computers allowed an effortless range of manipulation. Donna had shaken her head slowly, explaining her preference for black and white. Digital felt almost too easy to her. She loved the process, the manipulation of light and chemicals, the ritual of developer, stop bath, and fixer followed by washing and hanging the prints.

What she didn't say, but he knew anyway, was that she loved the range of control she had over the final product. Donna was always experimenting with techniques and processes, exposure times and filters, to manipulate the result. Dick had laughed to see her cutting up a pair of pantyhose to stretch over a small hoop, but the soft-focus effect created by moving that hoop back and forth in the beam of the projected light while exposing the photo paper was magical. To think something like that was created with a stocking and a coat-hanger was amazing.

Eventually Donna might buy herself a DSLR and the software for a digital darkroom, but she would always prefer the old-fashioned way, and Dick understood that and loved her all the more for it. She was, after all, his very best friend; sometimes it had felt like they were the only two on the Titans who had ever really _gotten_ each other. He had even been the one to give her away at her wedding….

That thought was ashes on his tongue, and Dick went into the living room in a more somber mood. He saw the binder Donna meant immediately, a large three-ring job with archival-quality plastic sleeves inside. Each sleeve held a single photo, printed on eight-and-a-half by eleven inch paper, with just a sliver of white border around the edge. Very stark, in the black-and-white medium she preferred, almost hyper-real.

Dick saw autumn leaves first, and half-denuded branches clawing a graying sky. The backgrounds were all out of focus, unreal, while the foreground images were so crisp they seemed to leap off the page. He paged slowly through the latest collection, wondering. More images: lichens on dark stone, birds silhouetted against storm-tossed clouds, black tree trunks buried ankle-deep in fallen leaves, a white feather caught in long brittle stems of grass.

All in all, a melancholy collection. Almost … funereal. Although that was to be expected, under the circumstances. Dick sighed, letting out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. Maybe, just maybe, as sorrowful as all this seemed, it was a step in the right direction.

And then he got to the end of the album. Everything up front had been natural images. The last few had manmade objects. A barb-wire fence with twists of horsehair caught in the barbs. A softball with worn laces sitting in a drift of leaves. And a child's tricycle lying on its side, the canted handlebars seeming to reach pleadingly up to an uncaring sky.

Dick closed the binder and closed his eyes, struck to the heart by that last poignant image. He was still standing there when Donna said softly behind him, "Didn't I tell you to feed yourself?" Her voice was small and uncertain the way it had so often been this last year, and the sound of it hurt him.

Turning to her, Dick held his arms out, and Donna came to him mutely, resting her head on his shoulder. Safe in the circle of his arms, the tension bled out of her body, and Dick found himself rocking her gently back and forth. "You're all right, _palone_, you're gonna be all right. I promise."

Donna sighed, her breath warm on his neck, and then she murmured softly, "If those worry you, I'd better not even show you the second series."

…

"I don't _know_ Superman's name," Elise pleaded, twisting her hands within the cuffs. Those car batteries … how much juice was that? How likely was it that her captor knew the amount that could hurt versus the amount that could kill?

"We have reliable information that you do," the distorted voice purred.

"Well, your information's wrong," Elise shot back. She couldn't keep her voice from quavering, but hoped she sounded more angry than scared.

"You don't want to lie to me, Ms. Thorne. Give me Superman's name."

It would be so easy, just two syllables, but Elise couldn't, wouldn't, do it. Not now. Not ever. Not even if she never saw Jason again. She _couldn't_ hand Mr. Kent and his family—because it would surely come to that—over to this sicko. "Listen to me very carefully," she said, forcing her tone level. "I. Don't. _Know_."

A disappointed sigh. "I did warn you not to lie to me." And then Elise finally saw the figure in the shadows, just a faint outline of an arm holding something with a tiny light on it. Like a remote of some kind…

…there was a louder humming, and Elise caught a whiff of a scent she knew well. Her father liked to build electric model trains, and the transformers had a certain oddly burnt, almost _furry_ smell when they got warmed up. Elise smelled that now, and the hair stood up on the back of her neck. "No, wait, hey, don't—!" she babbled, trying desperately to jerk free of her bonds.

A sudden loud crackle, and Elise screamed. Her wrists felt like they were being stabbed with fiery needles—but it wasn't lethal, thank God not lethal, just enough of a shock to make her shriek with surprise and pain. "Holy _shit_ don't do that!"

"Don't force me to," came the calm reply, as the hum quieted and the burnt smell faded. "Now, one more time. All I need from you is one thing, Ms. Thorne. One small thing. Superman's name. Then you can go. I promise you, he's a big boy. He can take care of himself. You don't owe him your death."

Elise started to cry. She couldn't help it. All she really wanted to do was get away from this, but she couldn't see a way out other than to do what her faceless tormentor demanded. And she _couldn't _do that. Mr. Kent was one of the nicest people she'd ever met, she'd known that even before she found out the family secret. She couldn't give him up. If she did, she'd drag the whole family into it, too. Mrs. Lane-Kent, what a firecracker, how could she sell her out? Not to mention Jason and Kala. Her ex and one of her closest friends.

The voice of self-interest in the back of her brain spoke up. _So you're gonna die for them? Is that the plan? Real noble and all, but you're gonna __**die**__. As in dead. As in worm food. As in body dumped in a landfill somewhere, or of the coast with a cement block chained to your ankle. And your parents will probably never know what happened to you. Don't they deserve not to spend years wondering if some serial killer got their daughter?_

No. She couldn't sell someone else out to save her own life. Elise just wasn't wired that way. Still crying, Elise managed to say, "No! Even if I knew I wouldn't tell you! Forget it!"

"Then there's only one thing left to do with you," the distorted voice said, and Elise saw the remote move again. She braced herself against the pain, hoping it would be quick, please God let it be over quick…

…the cuffs around her wrists clicked open, and a similar set at her ankles did too. Other bands around her chest and waist also sprung open, and the lights came up. Elise looked around wildly, unable to comprehend what had just happened.

The first thing she saw was that the cable from the car batteries went nowhere. They ended just outside the circle of light. She'd never been shocked and _couldn't_ have been shocked, not by the amount of voltage that had been threatened anyway. The intimidating dark chamber was some kind of storage room, with boxes labeled in code pushed out of the way to make room for her chair.

She then whipped her head around to stare at her tormentor, and to her immense shock saw a pretty redhead in green-tinted glasses. The surprise wasn't over, though. Her captor was sitting in a wheelchair—the source of the creepy motorized hum. "I'm sorry about all this," the young woman said, her voice quite pleasant without the digitizer. "We had to know if you could be trusted, first. I'll explain everything, but for right now I suppose you'd better take a moment to regroup. Oh, and by the way, the bathroom is the second door to your right in the hallway behind you."

Elise knew her jaw was hanging open. She couldn't quite process the situation. Her body chose that moment to remind her that she'd needed to use the facilities _before_ being threatened and shocked and scared, so she got up shakily and headed out into the hall, expecting every moment for someone to leap out of a corner and grab her. Nothing seemed real just then, and she sort of expected to wake up from this insane dream.

While she was taking care of business, she heard voices in the hall; the redhead and another woman. It sounded like a perfectly ordinary conversation, not chitchat between psycho killers. Elise splashed water over her face to erase the tear-tracks and take the puffiness from her eyes, then stepped back into the hall warily. She still didn't know quite what to think, but an emotion was beginning to eclipse the numb shock, and the feeling was _outrage_.

The second woman was a tall blonde in a black coat, giving her a somewhat pained smile. The redhead in the wheelchair looked over at her quite calmly. "Come into the other room, we have a lot to talk about."

Elise blinked. That sounded like such a reasonable request, and yet she couldn't let herself forget the whole strapped-into-a-chair-and-threatened-with-electrocution thing. "What the hell is going on here?" she demanded.

Before the redhead could speak, the blonde answered, sounding chagrined. "Elise, I'm sorry. It had to be this way. We needed to know if you would keep a secret that big, even under threat."

"You can't make me believe _Superman_ put you up to this," Elise snarled, started to shake. Partly out of reaction to the adrenaline that had been coursing through her body moments ago, and partly out of sheer rage.

"No, he didn't," the blonde said. "As a matter of fact, I had to warn him ahead of time not to come to your rescue, and he would only let us go through with this if we promised you'd get nothing worse than a static electric shock."

"_Bullshit_, that was way more than static electricity!"

"No, it wasn't," the redhead cut in. "You thought it was because I set the stage that way. You received an extremely low-current shock, on the order of five thousand volts but only a billionth of an amp. Thanks to the sound effects and the burning smell, though, you thought you were getting a much stronger shock."

"But _why_?!" Elise demanded. "And while we're at it, who the _hell_ are you?"

The blonde sighed. Before she could answer, the redhead said, "I'm Oracle. She's Black Canary. As for _why_, we might have a job for you. Now, are you coming?"


	18. Walking by the River of Time

**I have to give extra love to Anissa this week because, even with the two of us planning this chapter in advance, she's had to do the vast majority of the final work because I'm just worn out. This week always takes a lot out of me every year and I want her to know how much I love and appreciate her for putting up with me and all the irritation, frustration, and cold symptoms I've been running around with. So yeah. And enjoy, all. :D**

* * *

><p>Kala and the band—plus Dustin—were still house-hunting. The first fifteen places they'd seen all had major issues. Terrible acoustics in one case, a completely stripped interior in another, structural problems in a third, the one incident where the place was clearly being lived in by squatters, and in one memorable house, Kala had opened a closet door to the consternation of five baby raccoons living inside. <em>Yeah, no, not interested in anything that comes with furry roommates, adorable as hell or not, <em>she thought with a chuckle.

This was the sixteenth house, and from the outside it looked like a dump. Peeling paint and an overgrown yard, but it _did_ have a two-car garage. "Oh man, I bet there's rats," Robb groaned.

"Can I just wait outside?" Sebast pleaded. "I'm allergic to dirt."

"Then I'm surprised you're still alive. You have the dirtiest mind in the whole band," Morgan shot back, and Sebast glowered.

"Quit bitching," Kala said, standing on tiptoe. The realtor had said the spare key was on top of the front door frame … _there_. She unlocked the door and pushed it open. A very loud, very drawn-out screech accompanied the action. "Haunted as shit," Ned muttered, but they all stepped inside.

And stopped.

Vaulted ceilings, for one. A damn _chandelier_—older than crap, but it was still a chandelier. And yeah, the place needed a cleaning, Kala could see that already. Dust kittens in the corners, faded paint on the walls, but … it had promise.

"How many bedrooms is this?" Dustin asked.

"Three, and two full baths," Kala replied absently. They'd looked at one two-bedroom with the idea of converting the living room to an extra bedroom, but that only had one bathroom. She moved deeper into the house, finding the kitchen appliances were all avocado—but they were _there_. And looked like they'd been maintained.

The band spread out, exploring. The house was short on closet space, and it had a wonky hallway that was dark as hell by virtue of having no windows, but it could work. And the price for this one was right, landing in the middle of what they projected they could afford. Income-wise, they looked to be all right for the near future, what with pooled savings and the money Kala was able to use from her trust fund. Robb and Ned were already putting in applications at the mall, just in time for the seasonal ramp-up, and Dustin had done an interview.

"And now for the kicker," Kala said, going back to the kitchen and opening the side door that led into the garage. It was dimmer in there, and she fumbled for the light switch for a moment, giving the guys time to catch up.

"Holy crap," Sebast said, when the overhead fluorescents came on.

Kala blinked in surprise. There were _lots_ of electrical outlets, handy for plugging in amps and microphones and other equipment. And the area was definitely spacious enough for their needs. Walking forward, Kala clapped her hands briskly, hearing an echo but none of the awful reverb the one place had had. "I think we found our practice space," she said. "Can you guys live with the rest?"

"I dunno, it's kinda … run down," Robb said.

"So we paint it," Dustin said. "This is a rent-to-own deal, right? Keep it for two years and we get equity. I bet they'll let us paint it as long as we do a decent job. We can patch those holes in the one bedroom, too. I know how to do that."

"Are you really just the handiest guy on the planet?" Ned asked.

Dustin laughed. "Guys. I've never lived in an apartment. My family's been in the same house for three generations. _Kala's_ family has had the Kent farmhouse forever, practically. People like us learn how to fix things. It's cheaper than paying someone else to do it, and the skills come in handy."

"For the record, I know how to hang an interior door," Kala said loftily, and when they all looked at her, she grinned. "I threw Jason through one once. And that's why Mom stopped sending us to karate class."

"Yeah, 'cause you're already a violent bitch. You don't need extra training," Sebast quipped.

Dustin's head snapped around at that. He was still adjusting. 'Bitch' and 'diva' were among the affectionate nicknames Kala and Sebast called each other. Only she was '_blanquita_', and only he got called a slut, but most of the other trash talk was equally applied. Dustin normally wouldn't have let _anyone_ use any of those terms about Kala without answering to him. Sebast was a special case, though.

"All right, decision time," Kala said, smoothing over the moment. "Do we go to the realtor on this one and start the paperwork?"

"I'm down," Ned said.

"Me too," Dustin said.

"Why not?" Robb shrugged.

Morgan and Sebast both paused. Ned had moved away toward something on the wall; a sticker carelessly plastered by the door. "Hey guys? You ever hear of a band called the Flying Foxes?"

"Holy crap," Kala said. "My very first non-school-sponsored public singing was to open for them! And I got to sing with them later on. We covered My Chemical Romance. Is that really a Flying Foxes bumper sticker?"

"If it is, I'm sold," Sebast said, peering around Ned. "It _is_!"

"I'm in," Kala said.

"I'll take it as a sign," Morgan said.

"Then come on, let's get the ball rolling," Kala said. At long last, it actually looked like things were coming together.

…

Donna was right, the photos she'd taken _did_ worry him. Dick worried about her a lot more than she even realized. When she'd first started dating Terry Long—practically the moment she stopped being his student—he'd worried. Not because Terry was older, or because he'd been her college professor, or because Donna had met him during the tumultuous time after her powers vanished and she'd quit the Titans. No, what bothered Dick about the man was that Terry knew Donna had been Wonder Girl, and he seemed to … well, to pretty much _not care_.

That was different than the way Dick felt about her. He knew perfectly well who she was, and her superhero identity wasn't the most important thing about her. The _most_ important thing about her, in his book, was the little grin she gave only to him, the one that said, 'We just _get_ each other'. All the shared troubles and triumphs behind that small smile, all the late-night talks and the mid-afternoon chats. All the secrets shared and promises kept, all the times they'd been there for each other. All of that, in one little grin. _That_ was the most important thing about Donna: she was his best friend. Even without her powers, even when she wasn't a Titan anymore, he still called her more often than he called his girlfriends—about whom Donna teased him relentlessly.

Still, Terry obviously did care about Donna, and she was happy with him, that expansive kind of happy that made Dick's worries seem trivial. Donna had always been the sweetheart of the team, the girl all the guys stared after. Some girls might've liked that, but Donna confided to Dick that it exasperated her. "I feel like they're all looking through a soft-focus filter and none of them really _see_ me," she'd complained. "It's ridiculous. I mean, a form-fitting uniform drives them all speechless. Except you."

He'd laughed. "Where I come from, Don, spandex and spangles are basically the work uniform. It's no big deal."

"Sometimes I forget you're the circus boy who ran off to the city," Donna had replied with that grin, and Dick had hugged her. His friendship with her had always been comfortable, not like the rest of the guys. Roy and Garth had practically tripped over themselves around Donna, unless they were all involved in a serious fight that took precedence over adolescent infatuation.

Dick had asked her once, in the early stages of the relationship, why she'd chosen Terry Long. Donna had actually blushed. "Well … I spend enough time with boys. I, um, wanted to know what it'd be like, you know, dating a man. An actual pays-his-own-bills, knows-what-he-wants-and-knows-how-to-get-it _man_. And, well, um … yeah. I _like_ being with someone who's got it together. Terry's just so sophisticated. Plus he can talk to me when I'm wearing a low-cut blouse without giving himself neck strain trying not to stare."

The last had made Dick laugh, and by the time the wedding was announced, he was glad to walk her down the aisle. Donna had been radiant in white, and she'd given him that smile as he handed her to Terry. The older man had obviously been delighted, and their kiss at the altar made older women sigh and kids roll their eyes.

Within the first year of the marriage had come Robert, and Donna's life seemed complete. She finally had the _normal_ life she'd wanted. No more capes and code names, no more super-villains, no more saving the world before she could even drive a car, no more worrying about how she was going to survive a fight when her biggest worry should've been what to wear to prom. Donna had had a husband, a son, a career doing something she loved, a house, and a life that was safe and sane.

Dick had stayed in touch throughout that era. He actually liked hearing about Robert's adventures in teething, and listening to Donna debating the relative merits of oatmeal flakes versus bread crumbs in meatloaf. Through her, he had a measure of normalcy in his own life, at least for a while.

Then had come the time when he'd gone off on assignment with Koriand'r, and he'd been out of contact with almost everyone for months. When he got back, things had changed. There were new faces among the Titans, and Donna was acting distant—a first in their friendship. Dick was a little distracted by his planned wedding to Kori, and the fact that he managed to royally screw things up with Babs. Again.

By the time he'd gotten things right with Donna again, it had been too late.

Dick sighed and brought his attention back from the past, pushing a stray lock of hair out of Donna's face. "So are you gonna show me the second set, or not?" he asked.

She looked away, and he tilted her head back to face him. At that, Donna rolled her eyes. "All right, but no lectures, okay?"

"When have I ever lectured you?" Dick teased, making a wounded face, and Donna swatted his shoulder lightly. He had been the Titans' team leader; lecturing his teammates was part of his job description.

She led him, without further word, to the darkroom and turned on the light as soon as she opened the door. Dick wrinkled his nose at the chemical smell of developer and stop bath and fixer, a pungent reek he'd never thought he would miss until Donna set photography aside. He stepped into the room, moving past the equipment to get to the photos hung up to dry.

The very first one he saw stopped him in his tracks. The same child's tricycle he'd seen in the last series, framed within one of the fallen leaves. Dick remembered how to create this effect; Donna had made a photo for him once using the same technique. Back then, she had first exposed the paper with the image of the two of them, and then she'd had him put his hand down over the most important part: their laughing faces. Turning the overhead light on had essentially burned everything not under his hand to perfect blackness, leaving the image framed by the shape of his hand.

In that first photo, a few areas of the leaf were missing, leaving black spots in the middle of the image, and the fragile fringes of the leaf left the edges blurred. An eerie effect, for sure, that fit with the melancholic theme of everything Dick had seen so far.

He moved on down the line, inspecting each. Richard Grayson was no art critic, so he judged art on whether it spoke to him—and what it said. These photos seemed to whisper to his soul of the beauty and fragility of life, and the profound loneliness of loss. Another image: an abandoned house superimposed over the photo of the sky, seeming to hover in a sea of clouds. And next, the same two images as the last, but this one with the sky superimposed over the house. In that version, the house looked ghostly, and the two birds from the sky shot seemed to soar right through it as if it were no more substantial than a mirage or vision.

Dick looked over his shoulder, and Donna said simply, "The first one's too surreal. The second one is more of where I was aiming." That didn't surprise him, considering the events of the last year.

Walking slowly among the hanging photographs, some still damp, Dick encountered more of the shots he'd seen before, combined in novel and interesting ways. He remembered the process well enough, Donna gathering raw material in the form of negatives, and then combining them in different ways, using different techniques, to say what she wanted to say. Rarely did a single image perfectly express what was in her heart, although a few did. Dick bit his lip, thinking of the tricycle.

Behind him, glancing over her own work, Donna said, "I was playing with this idea of juxtaposing natural and unnatural images. Something about the timeless cyclic nature of, well, _nature_, and the impermanence of things built. You know?"

"I get you," Dick murmured. Here was an ordinary street scene, cars parked in front of a row of shops, made surreal by the fact that the sky above had been replaced by ranks of trees growing closely together. The forced-perspective of the scene made the trees seem gargantuan, monstrous. "This wasn't what you were after, either," Dick said, nodding to the image.

"I'm glad _you_ get it," Donna said softly. "I can't really explain it in words. If I could, I'd be a writer instead of a photographer."

To that he had no reply. Dick had found a stark image—the lichens from the first series, with a shadowy form rising from within the dark stone. He could _almost_ make it out, and the glimpses he got made his stomach churn. Donna didn't elaborate about that one, but he could hear her shifting her weight from one foot to the other anxiously.

He'd almost reached the end of the line. After a few more misfires that wandered into surrealism or simply hadn't been defined enough to see, he came to the final photo, the one Donna had been working on when he'd arrived.

Dick sucked in a breath as the impact of the photo struck him. Now he understood why Donna was so nervous. What she'd been trying to say through the others was _shouted_ here.

…

"A … job." The girl was practically shaking with rage as she stared at them both. Dinah had had her misgivings about this from the beginning, and now they were multiplying. "This was, what? An _interview_?!"

"No, it was your pre-employment test," Babs said calmly. Dinah hated it when the redhead was like this: completely committed to a course of action and unwilling to even _consider_ backing down. It was what made her so formidable as Batgirl and Oracle, her stubborn resolve that was so much like Bruce's.

It also made her a complete pain in the ass to deal with at times. If Babs was certain she was right, it took an act of God to sway her. Dinah put a hand on her shoulder to plead for silence and said, "What Oracle means is, the position we have in mind comes with a _high_ security clearance, and we need someone who can be absolutely trusted."

"A high security clearance, huh?" the brunette spat, her eyes flashing fire. "Higher than knowing Superman's home address?"

"Higher than that, yes," Babs agreed.

"On the order of knowing the real identities, full power sets, and potential weaknesses of a lot of other heroes, too," Dinah put in.

"Not interested," Elise snapped, and turned on her heel. Dinah tried hard not to grin; the girl wanted to make a dramatic exit, but she had _no_ idea just how far from Berkeley she was.

"Afraid of the commitment?" Babs asked sweetly, and Elise spun around like she was on a pivot.

"_What_?!"

At that point Dinah just leaned against the wall and watched the show. Obviously Babs had touched a nerve there, and if she was on to something it was best to just let her pursue it. Looking at Elise over her green-tinted lenses, she replied, "We're not talking about a summer job, here. This would be a career, and it would be integral to the future of the superhero community."

Elise stalked back toward them. "Look, I don't know _what_ you heard from J—Superboy, but I am _not_ afraid of commitment. I _am_ afraid of people who kidnap me and threaten to electrocute me. At least, I'm afraid they're not quite right in the head. No matter who you say you're working with or for, the only thing I'm interested in right now is getting the hell out of here."

She might as well not have spoken, for all the effect her words had on the redhead. Babs continued, "We have a variety of aliens, meta-humans, and hybrids, as you know, and there are some very brilliant and very _twisted_ people working at ways to harm them. Going after their specific vulnerabilities, based on their unique physiologies. We have researchers and chemists on our side, too, but most of them are working on small pieces of the puzzle because we can't trust them to see the big picture. What we need is someone who _can_ oversee the whole operation, someone with the skills and the training whom we can trust absolutely."

Elise just blinked, and Dinah stepped in. "On behalf of the Justice League of America, I was kinda hoping _you_ would be that someone."

For a moment, just a moment, she could see in the girl's eyes that Elise understood the scope of the opportunity being offered her. And then her lip curled. "Yeah, well, I'm _still_ not interested."

"All right then," Babs said. "I'll call a cab. Canary, walk her out, please?"

"Sure, O," Dinah sighed.

The next fifteen minutes were filled with awkward silence. Clearly Elise hadn't expected them to be so calm about her refusal. Then again, she was a civilian, no matter who she'd dated, and she just wasn't used to a world where people got kidnapped and threatened and scared spitless on a regular basis. Her outrage was almost tangible, and to have it met with casual acceptance threw her off.

As the cab pulled up, the girl turned a venomous look on Dinah. "You know, I might've gone for it if not for the whole electroshock therapy thing your friend has going on up there."

Dinah managed not to sigh. "Oracle can be pretty intense. She knows how steep the cost can be for what we do—and what the price is for not doing it. Sometimes she gets a little too wrapped up in it all."

"Yeah," Elise half-laughed, and headed outside. They were in San Francisco, not far from her college; it wouldn't have been smart to fly her all the way to Gotham. And besides, here they were close enough to Star City for Dinah to drop in and see Roy and Cissie and all the rest.

Dinah watched the cab leave before headed back in to the control room. Babs was never far from a half-dozen monitors set to survey her kingdom. "So that didn't go as planned," Dinah said, deciding that 'I told you she'd be furious' was too confrontational.

"Don't worry," the redhead told her. "I have contingencies in place already."

Bats and their backup plans. "Oh yeah? Because she seems pretty set on staying out of the game."

"Very few people can walk away once they've had a taste of the vigilante life," Babs said with an ironic arch to her brows. "We'll get her back in the fold. Just wait."

Dinah chuckled. Babs had confidence to match her determination. "Yeah, well, while I'm waiting, I'm going to go over to Star City and make sure the kids have eaten something _other_ than pizza since I was here last."

"Of course they have," Babs said with a smirk. "There are hot dog stands and taco trucks in the city, too, you know."

…

Three images layered together. That fallen leaf with its flecks of darkness and its tattered edges, framing a composite. The tricycle again, in achingly sharp detail, but now it was superimposed above a ghostly shot of a car. Not one of the neatly lined-up vehicles in the one he'd seen earlier, oh no. This was a slightly blurred image of a car in a junkyard, its front and rear ends crumpled, the roof mashed flat, sleek door panels dented and dull, with spangles of shattered glass splayed across the hood.

Not _the_ car, though, Dick saw instantly. Not the same car Terry had been driving a year ago, with Robert in his car seat up front. It had rained that evening, not a huge storm, just enough water to lift the oil on the roads. It was dark, the road was slick, and Terry liked to drive fast. A dangerous situation, but not an unusual one. All it had taken was one more variable to make it a fatal one. Perhaps a deer had darted out, forcing Terry to swerve. Perhaps an oncoming motorist had left their high beams on, briefly blinding Terry for a few, crucial seconds. Perhaps he had simply fallen asleep at the wheel. Regardless, he'd lost control of the car, crashed through a guardrail, and hit a tree head-on.

Both deaths were later ruled accidental. At the time, all Donna had known was that she'd been a wife and mother in the afternoon, and that night she was a childless widow. She had called Dick, of course, while the highway patrolman who'd brought the news was still at the front door. Donna had been so incoherent with grief that Dick had 'borrowed' the Bat-Wing to get to her side faster. She'd wept on his shoulder, bitter tears of guilt, mumbling that it was her fault.

That photograph brought the memory back with painful clarity. Dick looked at the dripping print and saw the death of Donna's hopes and dreams, the thing she'd refused to talk about for almost a year, and all the pain she'd kept bottled up like some rare wine that had turned to vinegar over the years.

"It's still not your fault, you know," he said, his voice rough.

Donna took a shaky breath. "Yeah, but … what if it is? I mean really, Dick. What if it _was_ my fault?"

Sighing, Dick turned and cupped her face in his hands, making Donna look him in the eyes steadily. "Donna. It was _not_ your fault. The worst part about it is that it was an _accident_. It could've happened to anyone at any time." If only he could get her to believe that, she _might_ be able to start healing.

"Yes, but … what if…?" She bit her lip, brows furrowed. "What if … sometimes, you know, things weren't … so easy, and maybe sometimes I wished I could go back to the way things were before. Before I lost my powers. Before I got married. Before … before I had Robert…."

"_Palone_, that just means you're as human as the rest of us," Dick told her gently. "A lot changed in your life in a short time—just two years or so. Having regrets, maybe wishing you could've gone back and done it over, that's normal."

"No, Dick, that's not what I mean," Donna insisted. She wavered, and Dick thought for a moment she was going to shut down, lock all of this away again.

Then her eyes flicked to the photograph, and the story came tumbling out of her like the image had broken down a piece of the dam holding back a flood. "I … look, I did have regrets. Terry … I loved Terry, but I think we rushed into it. And by all the gods, you _know_ how I loved Robert, but sometimes … sometimes I wished I would've waited to have him. There were times, when I thought about … about maybe looking into a trial separation, and … it would've been easier if I didn't have Robert to think about, too."

This was the first Dick had heard about Donna questioning her marriage. She'd always claimed to be happy, and amused him with a dozen little anecdotes about her day if asked how she was. On the one hand, it hurt not to have known about these doubts. Why hadn't she _told_ him? They told each other absolutely everything, even the worst mistakes they'd made and the most foolish things they'd done.

This wasn't about him, though. Donna looked at him with eyes that were still heartbroken and looking for permission to heal. "Don, that _still_ doesn't make it your fault. Even if you wished you didn't have either of them…"

She gasped, blue eyes going wide, and Dick leaned into her space to make his point, practically nose-to-nose with her. If she took nothing else to heart, she _had_ to understand this. "…even if you wished you were free of _both_ of them, Don, you _never_ wished for this to happen. _Never_. And if you had a choice it wouldn't have. Maybe someday you would've gone through with the separation, but you wouldn't have wished this on your worst enemy, and especially not on the people you loved. _It was an __**accident**__, Donna Troy._ The truth of it is, accidents happen all the time. Not everything is a plot or a curse or revenge by some villain we forgot about the moment we locked them up. Sometimes it's just _life_, and sometimes bad things happen. It isn't your fault. It never was."

Donna blinked twice, her expression almost blank, and then her lip trembled. Dick gathered her close just before the first sobs started, whispering to her that it was going to be all right, she would get through this, she wasn't alone, and all the other things he could think of to say, when they both knew what meant the most was that he was _there_.

As his best friend cried on his shoulder, Dick looked at the photograph again. It was a haunting image, to be sure, but in a way it gave him hope. Leaves fell every autumn and the trees turned bare and black in winter, but each spring new buds came forth from what had seemed dead. Maybe, even if Donna herself didn't know it yet, she'd begun to acknowledge the process of healing in the cycle of nature.

…

"You keep your little poacher off my stories, Kent, or I swear…!"

"Lois, you know perfectly well that story fell into International's domain…"

Jimmy Olsen watched the argument, feeling like a spectator at a particularly vengeful tennis match, and then looked across the desk at Perry White, who just grinned in apparent bliss. _The more things change, the more they stay the same,_ the news photographer thought.

He and Perry just watched the argument blossom to the point where Lois was poking Clark in the chest at every fifth word or so, and then the Chief cut in. "You kids better get this out of your systems before I decide to send you both on another assignment together. Hell, last time I got a set of twins to spoil rotten."

Lois instantly turned her fury on him. "I still owe you for that damn lizard, Chief. You know that frikkin' thing is still _alive_?"

"Hell, Lane, I never thought either critter would mean this much to you," Perry laughed, and Lois narrowed her eyes to a steely glare.

Clark, at least, recognized when he'd been given a break, and sat back down, adjusting his tie. Lois was left standing, and eschewed her seat to prop her hip against Perry's desk—the better to glare at all three of them.

It was all Jimmy could do not to laugh.

She and Clark _always_ fought at work. The one time they'd managed to get locked in the elevator together for two hours, Lois' frustrated wrath had been audible two floors away. Some reporters speculated that more than arguing went on in the elevator—and the supply closet, and certain conference rooms—but that wasn't Lois' style, or Clark's. Both of them had more class, and more respect for the workplace.

Wanting nothing more than to continue cajoling Lois out of her mood, Jimmy said, "Chief, now that they work in separate departments, what kind of assignment would you be able to send _both_ of them on?"

He realized his error the moment Perry grinned and Clark started looking nervous. "Funny you should ask that, Olsen," the Editor-in-Chief began.


	19. On the Brink of Big Decisions

**Okay, so this is not the largest chapter ever and I have to apologize for that. I caught the flu on Thursday, so production this week has been really slow. There were more scenes planned for this one to move along the plot, but I wasn't able to get them figured out in time with Anissa and I still feel like gutter-trash. So I'm sorry if this one feels like all fluff and no substance. I promise, there are big things planned for the next couple.**

* * *

><p>Sebast hitched his bag over one shoulder as he walked out of the restaurant, and rode the subway still in his work uniform: black long-sleeved shirt, black dress pants, a subdued and tasteful tie. Add a blazer and he would've looked like a young professional, a paralegal perhaps. But anyone standing within three feet would've gotten a whiff that said otherwise: the smoke from the grill, and the hundreds of delectable scents that perfumed the restaurant.<p>

The owners understood the temptation, and the staff were allowed to have any orders that got sent back, plus anything that couldn't be saved until the next day. A smart waiter would make nice with the cooks on the line and get tidbits here and there, especially if he pitched in to clean—and shamed the other waiters into helping out, too.

Sebast, who was a very smart waiter and who had a weakness for Italian food, had gained five pounds already. The way the tips were rolling in, though, maybe he could afford a gym membership. Ladies liked him best of all, the way he could flatter without being creepy, and he'd fight any other waiter in the place to seat a four-top of women in their forties. Most of them tipped well, and so far he'd only gotten his ass smacked once.

It was a damn good job, in its own way. He'd floundered the first week, trying to keep everything straight in his head, but once Sebast found the rhythm he was fine and was quickly becoming a favorite of the regulars. They liked his personality. The rest of the staff liked him, too. Especially since the one time Amy had a table of asshole college guys sneak out without paying. Company policy was that half the bill came out of her paycheck, but Sebast had shamed the rest of them into chipping in to pay for the meal. _Plus_ a tip. Amy had been so overwhelmed she'd started crying, which had ended up with the entire wait-staff telling her how much she was appreciated.

Sebast felt good about that—even though it _was_ five hours on his feet dealing with customers, the bane of service –kind. And if he ever thought to bitch about it, all he had to do was talk to Kala.

He arrived at the rental house where they were supposed to practice later tonight, and found Kala lying sprawled full-length on the living room floor. "Hey, guys, I like the new rug," Sebast called out, and Kala raised one arm wearily to flip him off. "It really matches the attitude of the place."

"Bite me, Chupi," Kala muttered.

Sitting down beside her head, Sebast reached into his bag and brought out a small box. "I brought you cannoli, _mi_ Kala."

That perked her up, though she seemed not to have the energy to eat. Sebast tenderly fed the cannoli to her, only dabbing her nose with the cream filling once. "Rough shift?" he asked.

Kala chewed, swallowed, and sighed. "The shift wasn't so bad. The cleanup after—and dealing with the public on my lunch—_that_ was complete ass. Why the hell did I decide to take a job in a _mall_ during the holiday lead-up?"

Sebast shrugged, absently rumpling her hair. "It pays, _mi amor_. And you get a 20 percent discount. At _Sephos_, remember. So you can keep us both in eyeliner for the rest of the year."

"And all the sweet little old ladies are afraid to come to me because they think I'll put them in royal purple eyeshadow and bronze eyeliner like mine," Kala sighed. "My regulars know better—hell, my regulars know I could use those colors subtly enough on them that it'd look good—but the new ones are a little nervous."

"It's better than Bed 'n' Bath. You'll never have to fold a towel again. Or deal with some moron bringing you coupons from a competitor that's been out of business for three years, and your manager gives it to them because he's a spineless little _pendejo_."

"Ugh, don't remind me," Kala groaned, throwing her arm over her eyes.

"Oh, and you never have to clean out the men's room again," Sebast added, teasing now.

She hit him for that, her hazel eyes narrowed. "What is _wrong_ with you guys, anyway? How freaking hard is it to just _not_ pee on the floor?!"

"Ay! Stop it!" Sebast laughed, batting her hand away. At least she was laughing; he hated to see his girl exhausted at the end of the day. "_Mira_, _I_ don't have that problem. Most guys think it's longer than it is. For me, well—"

He was cut off by a yelp as Kala groaned and punched his shoulder. "We are _not_ having yet another discussion of your enormous magical equipment, Sebast. I know you think it's the best thing in the whole world, but trust me. It's really not that big a deal."

"Oh but it _is_," he laughed, and Kala rolled her eyes in disgust.

That was when the front door opened, and Dustin came in. Sebast could tell it was him by the sound of him hanging up his work coveralls, and the way he wiped his feet more carefully than Robb or Ned. Grinning devilishly, Sebast looked over and called out, "Dustin! I wrestled her to the floor already, come on and take advantage while you can!"

Kala sat up to swat at him, growling imprecations in English and Spanish, but she _had_ gotten up so he counted it a win. Dustin looked at them both quizzically, and when Kala finished by using Sebast's shoulder to lever herself to her feet, he came over to hug her. "Do I even wanna know half of what you just said?" he asked.

Kissing him, she smiled and said, "Of course not."

"That's my girl," Sebast laughed.

…

It wasn't an assignment. Not really, anyway, though it had been assigned to both Lois and Clark—and Jimmy, too. He probably wouldn't have gotten drafted to this if he hadn't snickered at the looks on their faces when Perry announced it, though.

All four of them were at the Annual Newspaper Publishers' Association Convention in Fort Lauderdale, the location chosen more for the pleasant weather than any major relevance to the newspaper industry. Well, pleasant if you liked sun and sand and surf. Lois scoffed at all of it, and made sure everyone knew how displeased she was. Everyone. Already three out-of-state newspapermen had approached Jimmy and asked him if she was _always_ like that.

He'd said yes with a happy grin, confusing them all. Honestly, this trip felt like the good old days. Lois and Clark had one room, Jimmy and Perry shared the other, and they had most meals together. Breakfasts, when no one was fully caffeinated, were especially amusing. Lois eyeing the waffle maker in the hotel lobby distrustfully, Clark somehow managing to trip over a chair leg and bump into the tea canister without actually knocking anything over, and Perry indulging in all the bacon and sausage and eggs that Loueen wouldn't let him eat at home.

Jimmy came downstairs on the second morning of their week-long trip to find the others embroiled in an argument. He took one look at Lois' blazing eyes, Clark's crossed arms, and Perry's glower, and decided to slink away and get some vending machine snacks instead. Eating junk food in the room was better than dealing with this. The usual affectionate complaining was one thing, but that looked like a real fight, and he wanted no part of it.

"Olsen!" Perry barked, and the photographer reluctantly turned back to the group of them. His closest friends, really. The Chief grinned fiercely. "C'mere, Olsen, let's have an unbiased opinion."

"Uh, Chief, if it's anything to do with the paper I'm totally biased," Jimmy said, trying to find a way out of whatever this was.

"Not in this case," Lois snapped. "Fine, Chief. Have it your way. Look, Jimmy, this is the deal…."

To Jimmy's shock—and Lois' too—Perry cut her off. "Shut it, Lane, you won a Pulitzer for an editorial. I'm not letting you sway him from the word go."

"I gave the damn thing back!" Lois snapped, incensed. Jimmy flinched; winning the Pulitzer Prize for _Why the World Doesn't Need Superman_ was still a sore point with Lois. By the way Clark's mouth turned down, he was still hearing about it all these years later. No one ever said that Lois was anything less than tenacious.

Perry snorted brusquely. "Whatever, Lane. All right. Olsen, there's a breaking news story back home. These two—who are administrators, I remind you—want to run back to Metropolis and take care of it themselves."

"At our own expense," Clark added quickly.

"Well…" Jimmy began, and trailed off. "What's the story about?"

"International politics," Clark replied.

In the same instant, Lois said, "Financial fraud and racketeering."

The two glared at each other, and Jimmy groaned. Not _again_. He never would've guessed that so many stories could be claimed by the same two departments. "So what's the problem, Chief?"

"The problem is I'm not letting these two go haring off on their own," Perry growled, glaring at them both. "Their dime or my dime, I told them to come down here and they're damn well gonna stay here. So I need _your_ help keeping an eye on them. Kent might stick around if you tell him to, but Lane'll jump the fence in a heartbeat and go running for home."

Jimmy had to suppress a chortle at the looks on Lois' and Clark's faces. They looked _exactly_ like their own twins, caught in planning some mischief, turning sullen at the realization that they'd been headed off.

Lois hadn't given up yet. "Chief, come on. That's a bigger story than anything going on down here. It's just schmoozing and talking numbers. I have marketing for one and accounting for the other. I'm a _reporter_, dammit."

"You're an assistant editor now, Lane, and you have been for over ten years," Perry began.

She cut in with a furious, "Why do you _always_ bring that up? You know damn well I never wanted to be one! _You_ suckered me into taking it to get me home from Paris, and then you kept me there by having that damned heart attack! If I had my way I'd still be a beat reporter, but _you_ convinced me you needed _my_ help running the show!"

Perry continued as if she hadn't spoken, "And if you didn't train your reporters to pick up the slack, that's _your_ fault and you can't always go running back to do it for them. Krista and Philip are good kids, they've got good backup from the old guard, it'll be fine. Lane, you gotta _let go_ eventually."

"The hell I do. I was born a reporter and I'll die one," she groused, and Jimmy saw the admiring look Clark turned on her. It made him grin, too. Even after a long marriage and kids who had just turned twenty, they were still ridiculously in love.

"You're stepping up to Editor-in-Chief someday, Lane. I'm not gonna live forever." Perry spoke with perfect equanimity, but Lois turned away, looking as shaken as she always did. No one could ever say she was pushing for the position.

Jimmy decided to step in before they could start that argument. "C'mon, Chief, you're gonna live forever just to spite the competition," he said.

"Yeah, I still might," Perry laughed. "Someone has a good head on his shoulders. So you're gonna help me look after these wild reporters, right?"

Unfortunately, if he followed Perry's orders he would be stuck between his boss and his friends. Lois was already looking at him calculatingly. "I'm not sure that's a good idea," he said warily.

"Why not, Olsen?" Perry barked.

"Well, um, they're both kind of my bosses, too. Conflict of interest. If I listen to you or listen to them, either way I'm in trouble," Jimmy pointed out.

Perry gave him a disbelieving look. "Whatever happened to your guts, Olsen? You ran right in and took the photos of that Cyborg guy. Close enough to see his acne scars. You mean to tell me you're scared of the nicest guy in Metropolis and a five-foot-five woman who couldn't weigh a hundred and twenty with her shoes on?"

Jimmy took one look at Lois—who was glaring at him—and blurted out, "Of course!"

…

Life had a way of interfering, and this lunch was the first time Jason and Cassie had seen one another in over a week. If he were honest with himself, time with her was always too scarce. It felt like they saw each other in uniform more often than not, debriefings at Titans Tower and on saves together. A meal or a movie together out of uniform was the best they could do, most times. A night together—which Jason _definitely_ looked forward to—was so rare he practically considered such lucky events on par with national holidays.

At the moment, he was holding Cassie's hand, their fingers entwined beside the nearly-empty plates, and the two of them just looked at each other. Jason thought he finally understood the phrase 'feast your eyes'. Cassie was certainly a treat for all the senses, but visually she was absolutely arresting and utterly fulfilling.

She smiled, and Jason smiled back, his heart lifting. They'd reached the point where they didn't need to talk. A look, a touch, spoke volumes. And besides, if they talked it would just be about his classes or hers, his family or her mom, topics they were both up to date on anyway. It wasn't like they could discuss Titans business in a civilian restaurant.

As if thinking of them had been a jinx, both of their cell phones chirruped simultaneously. "Are you kidding me?" Cassie grumbled.

Jason glanced at his phone and saw a text from Bob's Pizza Palace. Code for Titans business, and the message was simple. _Need you to come in and cover a shift. _ "Awww, man," he groaned, already reaching for his wallet. He added up the cost of both entrees and two drinks in his head and plucked out enough cash to cover the bill, and then some.

"What do they need _both_ of us for?" Cassie wondered aloud, already getting up and grabbing her bag.

Jason shrugged, caught the waitress' eye, and made sure she saw the money put under a glass to keep it safe. "Gotta run, sorry," he called, knowing the woman would look less disappointed once she realized there was a hefty tip included.

"I'll give you a lift," Cassie said, and Jason winced. It made great sense, but he still wasn't comfortable with flying. At least Cassie was a saner 'pilot' than Kala.

It only took ten minutes for both of them to change and head in to Titans Tower, where the fight was already underway. "Another freaking grudge match," Cassie growled, and Jason felt his shoulders tense at the glimpse of gold and blue. _Deathstroke_. Just the person he didn't want to see.

The mercenary had been known to fight on _their_ side against certain threats, but in the end he was loyal to himself first, and to whomever was paying him second. The concept of overall loyalty to a team or a side was foreign to Slade Wilson. He was a formidable opponent, possessing enhanced strength and reflexes that put him almost on par with meta-humans, plus the mind of a brilliant strategist and a healing factor that made it hard to keep him down.

And as if that wasn't enough, he was also Rose Wilson's father. She'd completely renounced him and returned to the Titans, but Cassie still didn't fully trust her. Jason and Tim were the only ones who knew just how much Cassie worried about having Rose on the team. She'd been a live wire the _first_ time she ran with the Titans, and after her father had shown up to claim her and injected her with the same super-serum used on him, she'd been briefly psychotic. Rose had even gouged out her own eye in an attempt to win Slade's approval.

It was Nightwing who had brought her back into the fold, with a little help from Jason's own dad. Deathstroke had made one fatal mistake with his daughter's training—well, besides believing that Nightwing would ever turn his back on the hero community. He had given her a false eye carved from kryptonite and sent her and Nightwing after Superman.

That thought still churned Jason's stomach to remember it. He didn't run into too much kryptonite. The sudden wave of muscle weakness, the blurred vision, the ringing in his ears, all of those were things he could sense at a reasonable distance and avoid. That Dad had had to face it, and that he'd suffered it without retaliation in the confrontation to spare the civilian bystanders, was just another reason why Jason had a huge legacy to live up to.

Rose had turned away, stunned by that level of altruism. Jason thought that Mom was right, they represented _hope_—the hope that Rose could change, that she could break free of her father's conditioning and chose to side with the good guys. And later, when Dick told her that kryptonite was carcinogenic to humans, she'd ripped out the false eye and renounced her father for endangering her life so carelessly. She'd finally seen that Slade cared for nothing more than himself.

The adjustment to being a hero wasn't going smoothly for Rose. She had interpersonal issues with damn near everyone, and that eye-patch was intimidating to quite a lot of them. She knew it, too, mouthing off and being pushy, which led to a whole lot of fighting, usually with Cassie.

And now she was crossing swords—literally—with her father. "I'm not here for you, Rose," Slade growled. "Out of my way. Now!"

She sneered, white hair flying, and slashed at him again. Rose really was a girl with something to prove, but Jason couldn't follow that line of thought further because Slade hadn't come alone. He let himself get lost in the fight, thinking only of action and reaction, strike and parry.

Somewhere behind him he heard Rose yelling at Cassie. "Back off, Wondy, he's _mine_!"

"Shut up, Ravager!" came the terse reply, and then Slade laughing. Jason had had enough of the man, and grabbed one of his allies—no one he knew, but Tim would have a file later—and _threw_ the man at Deathstroke.

That broke the rhythm of the fight long enough for the rest of the Titans to swing in and turn the tide. Slade got away in the end, but not all of his allies did. Jason was more concerned with what was going on inside the team than with them, though.

"If you hadn't gotten in my way I'd've _had_ him!" Rose shouted.

"Dammit, Rose, we're a _team_! We're supposed to fight _together_!" Cassie yelled right back.

"Yeah well, you and I are damn good at that, aren't we, Wonderbabe?" Rose spat, jabbing an accusatory finger at Cassie's chest.

Cassie swatted her hand aside. "Knock it off! You can look up 'teamwork' in a dictionary if you have to, Rose, but this isn't it!"

"He's my father, he's my problem, it's none of your damn business!" Rose snarled.

"He breaks into Titans Tower, he's everybody's problem," Cassie shot back.

"All right, that's enough," Jason said, stepping between them. Tim looked at him and shook his head warningly, but by then it was too late.

They _both_ turned on him.

"Butt out, Baby Blue," Rose said dismissively, but there was a brittle edge in her voice. Jason didn't have time to think about that fact that she probably knew that _he_ knew she'd once tried to take down his father.

He was too busy dealing with Cassie, who turned on him with flashing eyes. "You stay out of this! She goes for my throat every time—"

"All right. Stand down, all three of you."

Jason cut Tim a quick look; of course he would step in now that Jason had already gotten yelled out by _both_ girls. And even more annoyingly, Rose and Cassie actually broke away when _Tim_ said something. Jason just sighed.

Then again, Rose listened because she had a bit of a crush on Tim. And Cassie wasn't insulted when he gave orders, because he wasn't her boyfriend. Jason could already see by the look in her blue eyes that Cassie was decidedly unhappy with him.

He pitched in with the cleanup and triage of the injured, thinking to himself, _The hero thing would be perfect if we could just separate out the personal side. But then the personal side wouldn't work between us if not for the fact that we're both heroes._

…

Once the band, plus Dustin, were all home and fed and rested, they headed out to the garage to practice. Song ideas were tossed around over dinner, and Morgan had been fiddling with some lyrics earlier while they waited for Ned and Robb to get in. Those two, caught without local references or highly marketable skills, had been forced to take whatever jobs they could find. In Robb's case, that meant the local big-box discount store, mostly working as a stocker at night but picking up some day shifts on the registers. Ned, meanwhile, was cooking in a fast food joint. Both of them had quickly become the official weirdos of their respective jobs and took a certain amount of teasing for their looks and style.

Kala was already planning to turn up to both boys' workplaces, dressed to the nines with the streaks in her hair hidden and generally looking very 'corporate' and polished. She could just imagine the looks on their coworkers' faces when she greeted them both with warm hugs. Maybe it would provide a little object lesson in not judging books by their covers.

Morgan, Ned, and Robb tuned their instruments and warmed up. Kala and Sebast had to tune theirs as well, singing a few scales. Once everyone was sufficiently limber and in the right mindset, Sebast called out the first song, a cover of _String Theory_. Their version had been rendered as a duet, with Kala and Sebast singing the last verse in counterpoint, and Morgan's talented guitar replacing the piano in the original. _That_ was a challenge, trying to hit the right notes while competing with the voice she spent most of her time harmonizing with.

Dustin liked being their audience of one, lounging with a soda and just listening. It still wasn't his style of music, but he could appreciate melody and nuance, and if something sounded off to him he wasn't afraid to tell them. In just a few weeks he'd become a favorite of the boys, who wouldn't ordinarily trust someone so normal.

Sebast was in a Les Friction mood, and they ran through a couple of other songs, finishing with _World on Fire_. Kala loved that one; it always gave her chills. "World on fire with a smoking sun/Stops everything and everyone/Brace yourself for all will pay/Help is on the way," she sang, putting in an extra kick of emotion to the final line and holding the note. As always, Sebast matched her flawlessly, his voice an eighth below hers supporting her.

Sometimes that song made her think of the legacy she had chosen to step away from … and the way she couldn't quite manage to do that. Even as they switched to their own music, and set about the serious work of getting every chord and riff to sound perfect, in the back of her head Kala felt that old, faint twinge of guilt. She was living, well, not quite a double life, but one and a half lives. Counter staff at Sephos, rockstar at night, and sometimes a vigilante. She hadn't actually put on the mask since that night they'd gone to stop Spoiler from trying to get solo revenge on a psychopath, but still.

There'd been the occasional save, using her speed just yesterday to stop someone on a cell phone from walking into a busy street. That didn't really count, though. Kala felt like maybe she was pursuing her _human_ dream and finally leaving the legacy of Krypton to Jason, where it belonged. Except … she knew if anything happened to him, she'd make whatever excuses she had to and fly to his side.

No one realized she'd actually _heard_ Speedy ask him if his superpowers including summoning hot chicks to kick ass for him. Kala hadn't known whether to feel complimented or to distribute a little extra ass-kicking Speedy's way. In the end she had just let it go.

Sebast interrupted her reverie by snapping his fingers by her ear. "Earth to Kala. Kala, come in. Are you gonna offer your opinion on the last guitar riff, or was it so good you're entranced?"

"Sorry," she laughed. "Lost in space. One more time, guys?"

Morgan looked at her reproachfully, and Kala forced herself to focus. They had a gig this weekend, and needed all the exposure they could get.


	20. Both Shaken and Stirred

**A/N: Dear readers, this is Anissa. I have to tell you a little secret. I'm kind of a fandom newbie to the rest of the DCU. Oh, Superman movieverse is my home sweet home, but as we've branched out into bigger things, Lois and I have been trying to make sure this sprawling universe fits with our vision. And occasionally I've had a blind spot or two. **

**There's one in particular that bugs me, and we're going to fix it as of now. At this point in Stephanie Brown's career, she has been Robin, but she hasn't yet become Batgirl. After being fired as Robin, she went back to Spoiler instead of slipping directly in the pointy-eared costume. And I botched that transition when I was doing research. **

**The only edits to previous chapters are the name Batgirl being changed to Spoiler. Stephanie is still herself, but she's cloaked instead of cowled. And this way you get to ride along in her journey to Batdom as well….**

* * *

><p>Days like today, when homework was a pain and life felt like a dull grind, Stephanie Brown reminded herself that she had been <em>Robin<em>. Once she had run at Batman's side, kicking bad guys in the face and stopping crime. She had been, and still was, a _hero_.

Before her stint as Robin and after it, she went by Spoiler. Steph admitted to herself that it was a goofy name. It sounded like she was a warning in a YouTube video title. _WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS_. At least the world was lucky that so far there was only one of her.

Goofy or not, the name had been apt. Her father, Arthur Brown, was the Cluemaster. Captured and imprisoned in Blackgate, he'd supposedly reformed … but all Dad had really done was shed his compulsion to leave clues lying around. So Steph, sick of having a crook for a father, sick of seeing the look in her mother's eyes when Dad didn't come home on time, had started leaving clues of her own. Like little smoke signals sent out to Batman and his flock, trying to get them to stop the Cluemaster—speaking of goofy names—before he got into worse trouble.

All she had wanted was to protect their little family. Sure, Mom had her issues, and Steph herself hadn't been the _best_ kid in the world—not with a baby of her own out there somewhere, and every time Steph thought of her daughter it was a knife in her heart—but they _were_ a family. And at the time she'd thought they still could be, if Dad could just stop trying to rob banks and pretend he was some kind of gangster, if he could just go back to being the Dad he'd been before, the man who had boosted baby Steffie up onto his shoulders so she felt like she could see the whole wide world. True, he'd never been home much when she was little, spending a lot of his time in jail, but the memories she had of him were precious.

Well, some of them were. Steph closed that line of thought off, focusing on the good times. Remember the good, learn from the bad and then let it go, that was her motto, and it had done well for her so far.

Once her motto have been 'never give up hope'. But … that was then, this was now, and the idea of the Cluemaster redeeming himself was a childish dream. Arthur Brown wasn't one of the good guys. Sure, he had some good in him, Steph supposed most people did. But even Tim, one of the definite good guys, had a cold and calculating streak in his nature, and Batman could be terrifying as all get-out. If the good guys had a little bad in them, then the bad guys probably had some good in them, too. It just stood to reason.

Not that it didn't hurt, thinking of her dad as a bad guy, but … it was true. He had his own profile in the Bat-computer. He'd threatened to maim _her_ with acid, before he'd known that the Spoiler was his own daughter. He was Not a Nice Man. That knowledge weighed heavily on Steph. And if it was heavy to her, it had to be crushing to her mother, even though the man was officially her ex-husband.

Steph paused in her haphazard essay and listened to the house. Crystal Brown had the night off, and was sleeping, the fan in her bedroom making a soft blurring noise. Mom worked long shifts, and sometimes she would work ten or more days in a row at the hospital. She liked the night shift, when the pace was slower and she could get more done for her patients. If Steph had thought about it, she might've been worried. During the worst part of her marriage, Crystal Brown had sought peace and comfort anywhere she could find it. Working as a nurse with access to the dispensary, she tended to find it in bottles of pills.

She was clean now, though. Mom was clean, Dad was locked up, and Steph was passing her classes. So life was good.

Except, well, she spent so much time studying that she didn't have any energy left to go run the rooftops. Her career as a vigilante had begun to stop her father's crimes, and she'd hung up her cloak whenever he was safely in prison. But sometime while she was running around with Tim, or maybe while she'd been Robin, Steph had realized she _liked_ that life. Having a secret identity was a sort of power all its own. She put on the Spoiler uniform and became more than just Steph Brown. She was an idea, she stood up for justice, and she could walk down the nastiest streets of Gotham City without fear.

Well, okay, she mostly walked _above_ them, because only an idiot sauntered down the middle of the street unless they were a crook, but still. She'd seen and done incredible things, and it felt like there was a fire in her heart some nights, a fire that burned quiet most of the time. When it rose up, though, _then_ she just had to go out and put a little fear into the bad guys.

Not tonight, though. Tonight Spoiler's only enemy was the War of 1812, and she looked at her half-finished essay with a sigh. Quietly, she said to the empty room, "And thus the crusader for justice returned to her Sisyphean task, forcing herself through the last eight hundred grueling words of her homework." That, at least, let her smile while she did it.

…

Kal-El was often the spectator in Lois' discussions with Perry, discussions that rattled the windows and occasionally turned the air blue with a haze of curses. And yet, he'd noticed over the years that as much profanity as both of them let fly, they never actually cursed each other. There was a world of difference between "Dammit, Perry, what the hell were you thinking?" and "Damn you, you sonofabitch!"

Although if Lois was ever going to unload her vocabulary of driving words—which included a few terms of Tagalog that cast aspersions on the target's parentage—it would be today. Kal-El reflected that he really shouldn't have flown Lois back to Metropolis in the middle of the convention, not even when Krista and Philip called and asked both of them for advice.

"…and you dragged _Superman_ into it, too, Lane! I dunno what you've got on the guy, but I never expected to see him flying you and Kent back here over a _story_! One that had nothing to do with _him_!"

Kal-El fought down a smile. _What she has on me is pretty much everything, Mr. White. My secret identity, my kids, and her wonderful self. I don't need blackmail with incentives like that._

Lois tossed her head, flicking an errant lock of wavy hair over her shoulder. There was still some black in there, but the dominant notes were dark steel and bright silver. Highly appropriate for Lois, but he hadn't told her so. She could still be a bit touchy about the hair.

"Bite me, Chief," Lois growled. "That damn convention was a waste of my time, and the kids here _needed_ me. Did you _see_ how Ames projected the layout for the front page? That damn goat outside your window would've jumped off the building in protest."

All three of them glanced at the enormous stone ram's head visible from Perry's office. The sculpture functioned as a gargoyle, draining water from the upper floors, but it was much grander than it had to be, a souvenir of the architect's hubris. More than a few staffers over the years had whispered about it being especially apt in its placement. Perry did have a tendency to put his head down and charge at anything that balked him, and he and Lois did lock horns with some frequency.

At the moment, their Editor-in-Chief swung back around to his current protégé and nemesis, and Kal-El could almost _hear _the sound of heavy horns clashing at the charge. "The point, Lane, is that I told you not to do something, and you went on and did it anyway!"

"Story of my life," Lois shot back. "If I'd left the EMP business alone back in the day we'd've never known it was goddamned Lex Luthor behind it all! Since when do I actually follow orders?"

Perry's eyes narrowed, and he grinned. Kal-El started to get worried at that moment, but he'd learned years ago not to barge into confrontations between the two. "You know, you're right, Lane. I can afford to have a beat reporter slip out under the gate once in a while, but not an administrator."

Lois answer was so laden with sarcasm, it was almost delivered in sing-song. "Which is _why_ I don't want to _be_ a freaking _administrator_!"

"Fine. You've convinced me. Consider yourself demoted to city reporter effective immediately, Lane. I'll adjust your salary accordingly." And while Lois was frozen in shock, simply staring at him, Perry added, "You, too, Kent."

"Now wait just a minute, Mr. White," Kal-El protested, standing up. Lois' jaw was still hanging open in amazement.

Perry fixed him with a gimlet glare. "I almost expect Lane to go haring off after I've expressly told her not to, but somehow _you_ got Superman to bring you along for the ride, so you can share the misery, too."

"But who will run our departments?" Kal-El asked, trying for some sanity in the midst of this madness.

"I'll handle City. And International practically runs itself, or so my nephew once said," Perry retorted.

"And you'd take the ten-year-old word of a man who went to work for the _Aviation Journal_?" Lois snarked.

Grinning ferociously, Perry shot back, "I'll take the word of the man smart enough to marry a millionaire, Lane. Why? You objecting? I thought you _wanted_ to be a reporter again. If it's too much responsibility I'm sure Helen will let you come back to the mailroom…."

"Hell no. And our first order of business is going to be tracking down the _rest_ of this story. There's more to it than what Krista and Philip dug up, I know it. C'mon, Clark." With that she spun on her heel and stalked out.

Kal-El watched her go, and then turned to his boss, still reeling. Perry's smile softened. "It'll only be a week or so, Kent, and I'll forget about the salaries. Lane wants that story and she'll throttle anyone who gets in her way—anyone but you, and I'd sleep with one eye open just in case. Sometimes a newshound's got to hunt, even if by rights she should've given it up by now."

_You never did,_ he thought but didn't say. All Kal-El could think about was the story Perry had found out about, researched, and written up two years ago—a kickback scandal in D.C. that had been in contention for that year's Pulitzer. Aloud, all he said was, "Yes, sir, Chief. We'll get right on that story."

…

This was that wonderful rarity, a Wednesday evening free from obligation. Wednesday because neither of them had class on Thursday mornings, and free from obligation meaning no dinner with parents, no appointments, and no call-outs from the Titans. So far, anyway. A night they could spend together. Not many of those, not as many as either of them would've liked.

What to do with all those precious hours? They did get to have meals together, from the occasional lunch to hastily-snatched snacks at the Tower, but a leisurely dinner was always welcome. And afterward … Cassie didn't believe in talking in detail about her love life, not even with her close friends, but even she would say that they found joy in each other. The only problem was, well, finding said joy. Or the space to share it.

Jason's dorm was shared with a roommate and an iguana, and Cassie lived with her mom, so it was never going to be his place or hers. They each had a room at Titans Tower, but after they were busted once, the knowing looks and smothered snickers were just too much to deal with.

Cassie found herself thoroughly exasperated by everyone's attitudes. She and Jason were both adults, everyone knew they'd been dating for months, so the fact that they'd both walked out of her room at five in the morning really shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone. Yet the whispers and giggles made it seem like some kind of scandal. For a team that regularly saved each other, civilians, the city, and sometimes the world, they were being awfully immature. Rose, especially, had a habit of tipping a knowing wink and waggling one eyebrow to Cassie whenever she and Jason were within fifteen feet of each other. It was quite simply infuriating.

And Jason found it embarrassing. She loved him for that, honestly. Other young men would've been entirely too proud to be sleeping with her—to the point that a few had been known to claim they had done so when absolutely nothing of the sort had occurred. Among the caped crowd, she could just call them out to battle for the sake of her honor, a prospect that generally caused a hasty retraction. In her civilian life, sadly, Cassie couldn't show up in full Amazonian battle-gear, sword in hand, and challenge the liar. The thought of doing so let her keep her composure enough that her laughter was denial enough.

As always, Jason had tried to deal with the problem logically, pointing out the flaws of meeting up—he never said hooking up, and she loved him all the more for that—in various places accessible to them both. Cassie had muttered, "Well what else can we do?"

He had given her a serious look and then just grinned. "I have an idea." And that was how Jason Kent signed up for a hotel chain rewards system as a birthday gift to himself. Jason Kent. The good guy, the nice boy her mother had always hoped she'd meet, he signed up for a rewards card.

"And how are we going to pay for this, Jason?" Cassie had asked. "It's not like either of us gets a salary from the Titans."

He'd looked abashed. "Um, I hadn't planned to ask you to pay." And then she'd found out about the trust fund. His scholarships paid for most of his college expenses, and the dividends from the trust fund were his to spend, though most of them got reinvested. Jason's expenses were moderate: food, supplements and such for his iguana, clothes (a department in which guys had life vastly easier than girls), and the occasional movie ticket or gift. Jason did give wonderful gifts, not like some guys his age; she could tell he actually thought about what she would like.

So he had extra money, and after the first few times Cassie got used to meeting him in a hotel room. There was something deliciously fun about getting a room together, anyway, like it was both something forbidden and proof that they were genuine adults. She insisted on ordering in room service or having pizza delivered or bringing dinner, though. Her mother's feminist sensibilities wouldn't let Jason pay for everything, not when she had a part-time job and some spending money of her own.

Speaking of her mother, Dr. Helena Sandsmark surely knew that her daughter wasn't just talking astronomy with her handsome, well-spoken, charmingly shy boyfriend. Although he would lose all reticence if you got him on the subject of his studies, and when he'd come to dinner Cassie's mom had been surprised to learn all about the fascinating new data from the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Planet Hunter project he'd taken part in, wherein volunteers searched data from Kepler Space Mission for evidence of faraway planets in the dimming of stars. Pleasantly surprised, though.

It was only afterward that she had taken her daughter aside. "Against all my motherly instincts, I approve," Mom had said, and Cassie had beamed. The fact that Jason was planning to pursue a master's degree at the least—maybe a doctorate—certainly helped. And then her mother had raised her eyebrows and said quite calmly, "You're taking all reasonable precautions?"

Cassie had blushed. Even though she was a demigoddess and a superhero, she had blushed and muttered, "Yes, Mom," like any other nineteen-year-old. She'd been on birth control from the time she started dating, under her mother's better-safe-than-sorry rules, and Jason had told her about his own parents' plans, which basically consisted of informing him where the condoms were and that they weren't counted. So they were safe from any surprise Super-Wonder babies, at least, which was the last thing either of them needed at this point in their lives.

Although, with a mostly-demolished pizza on the table and the NASA channel playing on the TV, Cassie wasn't thinking about her mother's approval or his parents' acceptance or, gods help her, having kids. Instead she was lying with her head on Jason's chest and his arm around her shoulders, listening to the rumble of his voice as he gave her the background on the Swift GRB Mission. He felt NASA's coverage of the latest GRB detection was too superficial. "I mean, this one is totally new. Professor Sarsten completely derailed class to talk about the analysis. It's the longest gamma-ray burst ever detected; it beats the last one by almost a full twenty seconds. That's unheard of, Cassie. I mean, if the last one was a star the size of our sun that got stuck in a black hole, this one is either a supergiant bigger than any we've ever seen, or it's a giant getting eaten by a black hole."

"Amazing to think stuff like that is going on all the time while we look up at the night sky," Cassie murmured.

Jason turned and kissed her forehead. "Well, yeah. And the even cooler part is that since this is two billion light-years away, we're actually seeing into the past."

He went on, and Cassie lost herself to the rhythm of his voice and the wonderful warmth of him beside her. Only Jason Kent would consider stuff like synchotron emissions and accretion disks to be pillow talk. She listened, and tightly traced his abdominal muscles with her free hand, feeling the steady rise and fall of his breath.

After a few minutes Jason stopped, and looked at her with a touch of chagrin. "I'm boring you senseless, aren't I?" he asked sheepishly.

"Nah," Cassie murmured. She looked up at him, letting him see the mischief in her smile. "If I get bored I'll just change the subject."

"Oh, really?" Jason asked.

"Yeah, really."

"How, exactly? I mean, this is my major and also sort of my heritage. I can talk for days—"

But at that precise moment, he stopped talking, because Cassie was sliding the tongue of his belt through its buckle. Nice and slow and casual. And another of the things she loved about him was that, at moments like this, there was still a look of wonder in his eyes, swiftly darkening to desire. No matter how often they slept together, Jason was still just a little amazed.

She couldn't resist grinning at him. "Like this, that's how."

He rolled up onto his side to kiss her, his hand dropping to her hip for an affectionate, familiar squeeze. That easy strength, she loved that, too—other guys were intimidated by her powers, but with Jason it was a non-issue.

Shirts were off and he was unhooking her bra—looking through her with x-ray vision to see what he was doing—when Jason paused to catch her gaze. "All right, Cassie, you win. You're right."

"I'm right about what?" she asked, tilting her head slightly.

The bra came unhooked just then, and his hands took up the support instead. "There _is_ something more fascinating than astronomy."

Cassie laughed merrily at that until he stopped her with a kiss.

…

Lois' blood was boiling. _How dare you, you conniving old hellion, how __**dare**__ you!_ Perry had given her exactly what she wanted, but in just such a way that she couldn't savor it. And now she was on stakeout with her husband, hunched way down in the seat of a battered Rent-a-Wreck sedan, watching the back doors of a small shop. "What do you hear?" she asked Kal-El.

"Two men arguing the mahjong score in Cantonese," he replied shortly. Kal-El was significantly less enthused about this assignment. He'd settled well into the role of administrator, and was probably worrying more than he should've about how Ron was handling the added stress. His middle daughter, Joanna—the painter, the wild one, unsurprisingly the one named after Lois—had recently announced her engagement to a fellow painter she'd met in Florida. Considering that she'd known the guy less than three months, and no one in the family had ever met him, Ron and Lucy were understandably freaking out. Lois, less so. She'd read the announcement, and the part where Lucy wrote, 'Sometimes, you just know' had resonated with her.

She'd just known about the man beside her. Perhaps not at their first meeting, but even then she'd known he was definitely different, and for a man to get Lois Lane's attention required either a huge effort or a strongly unique character. Clark had made an impression … and later on Superman had pretty much embossed himself on her life. Yes, she could agree that sometimes you just _knew_.

Like the set up in the shop, as a matter of fact. It might've looked like four middle-aged men playing a game that had much in common with poker, but Lois _knew_ it was more. The fact that the four men were the heads of four different associations—two of which had intense rivalries with each other—was one clue. And there was also the tipoff she'd gotten from Philip, that a fifth man often joined them, though not to gamble. Mr. Joeng was never seen to gamble, or drink, or smoke, or indulge in any other interesting little vices. He _was_ a person of interest in several racketeering investigations, but nothing had ever stuck to him.

Lois muttered, "What about the banker? Suen. Is he acting nervous?" Mr. Suen wasn't just the manager of the most prestigious bank in the area, he also ran the banker's association. They had precious little information on him, but he'd struck Krista as the most anxious of the group. If his banks were being used to launder money, as Lois suspected, maybe he had a good reason to be nervy.

"Not yet," Kal-El murmured. His super-hearing and x-ray vision were extremely handy during a stakeout like this. Once upon a time, he would've refused to use them, but these days he preferred to keep both of them a little further out of sight of their targets.

Lois slid a little lower in her seat, sipping the last of her wonton soup and reviewing the salient facts. Back in the day, the Chinatown associations had been called _tongs_, and they had formed mainly to protect their people from anti-Asian prejudice among the majority population of the city. Over time, however, the various tongs had come to represent families, regions, professions, and in some cases, crime syndicates. They were a lot like mob families. The culture might be different, but the fanatical loyalty was the same, and so were many of the crimes.

Extortion, racketeering, prostitution, gambling, larceny, drug trafficking—everywhere in the world the same sordid business. And Lois couldn't pass this one up, not when she knew that Mr. Lei inside was the brother of the current Chinese ambassador. Prove _his_ connection to organized crime, and maybe he would be forced to resign. Then maybe something could be done about certain U.S. military secrets mysteriously appearing in Chinese documents intercepted by American intelligence.

Not that Lois would go so far as to accuse him of espionage. At least, not yet.

"God, I missed this," she sighed happily.

…

There was always a fight, somewhere, somehow, and Jason was never surprised to be called out. Not anymore. He was a valuable asset to the Titans, after all, as much for his Bat-training and his steadiness under fire as for his powers. Or so he believed, anyway.

This time it was a new opponent, and that always made him extra-wary. Lex Luthor was out there somewhere selling kryptonite to everyone who could afford it, and just because Jason had inherited some immunity from his mother didn't mean the stuff wasn't still extremely dangerous. Enough of it would kill him. Even a little would make him weak, dizzy, and disoriented. So Jason circled and observed as his teammates distracted the man, his senses alert for the first tingle of kryptonite radiation.

Nothing. With that he dove into the fight. This man was an above-average fighter, wearing a dark blue cloak that swirled around him and partly obscured his movements. His mask had darkened eyeholes, too, presenting an intimidating darkness instead of a face. Those kinds of dramatics rang hollow after a season in Gotham, though. Rose and Raven were in on the game, too, Rose taking on a couple of the main guy's minions single-handedly—and with her trademark skill. Raven kept wrapping the major foe in shadows, harrying him while the others closed in. Jason moved patiently, keeping out of Cassie's way and avoiding the grappling line Tim shot toward their foe.

The man swept his hand toward the tightening line, and it fell away. Very smooth, Jason hadn't even seen the knife. But knives were of little concern to him. It was his way, in a fight like this, to come in slow and careful. Once he set hands on a villain, unless they had super-strength of their own, the whole deal was over.

Cassie threw a punch, and the man blocked it, his gauntleted forearm taking the blow squarely. She scowled, dancing back, and Jason made his move. Let's see if this fool can handle two superheroes at once, he thought, and lunged to grab the man. Very few people could break his grip, and even if this guy was a metahuman, Cassie could always knock him out while he was distracted.

Except it didn't go that way at all. The man's hand came up to strike at Jason's head, a blow he didn't even bother to deflect—super-strength wasn't much good against Kryptonian invulnerability—and then the world went white.

When he came to, Cassie was crouched over him with a worried expression on her face. "Can you hear me? C'mon, wake up, I know you can hear me! You'd better not be in a coma or anything, I swear…."

He blinked a few times, and then tried to smile at her. "If I was, would you try to wake me up with a kiss?"

Cassie punched his shoulder, and Jason flinched. Okay, maybe it wasn't the best time to make a Sleeping Beauty joke. But she was already sighing with relief and pulling him into a hug. "I was worried about you."

"I kinda noticed," he chuckled, and hugged her tight. "Guess that guy was a lot stronger than I thought. How long was I out?"

"Almost three minutes," Tim said, staring at him. "All your vital signs were normal, you just weren't waking up."

"You shoulda tried to kiss of life yourself," Rose called, smirking, and Cassie looked away from Jason to curl her lip in anger.

Tim just waved his hand at Rose like she was an annoying mosquito. Jason had heard about Rose's beef with him; apparently she didn't take well to being handcuffed and dragged out of anyone's bed, once she'd bothered to show up there topless. To Jason, Tim said, "You'll need to go get checked out."

He groaned. Jason had never liked going for a checkup; he'd spent too much time in various specialists' offices as a kid. "I thought I was done seeing doctors when my powers came in," he grumbled, getting to his feet.

Cassie rolled her eyes at him. "Oh come on. It's no big deal. And if you behave I'll get you a lollipop afterward, all right?"

That gentle teasing made Jason roll his eyes, but it worked. "Fine. I'll meet you at the Tower."

"You sure you're okay? You were out for a long time. Relatively speaking," Tim said, his brow creased with worry.

"Maybe I should fly you," Cassie said.

There was a fine line between touching concern and annoying apprehension. Jason made himself smile even though Cassie and Tim were on the less-welcome side of that line, so far as he was concerned. "Really, guys, I feel _fine_. Well-rested and ready to go. I'm only going to check in because _you_ asked me to." With that, he turned and sprang, letting his leap carry him out of their range.

Except … that didn't happen.

Jason was looking at the ground again much too soon, and managed to trip over nothing at all as his expectations clashed with reality. He would up going face-down on the asphalt, and it _hurt_. He sat up again, flooded with numb shock.

No. Wait.

That shouldn't have hurt! He was invulnerable to most things, he'd had bullets bounce off him, he'd even walked through cement block walls before. But when Jason automatically brought his hand to his stinging jaw, it came away bloody. He turned to stare at the rest of the team, and even Rose lost her sarcastic grin.

A cold chill ran down Jason's spine, and he stared at his bloodied palm. No matter how hard he tried, though, he couldn't see _through_ it. Strength gone, invulnerability gone, x-ray vision gone … he realized with creeping horror that _all_ his powers were gone.

He looked at each of his friends and teammates, seeing only dawning fear in their eyes. "Jase?" Cassie murmured, worried enough to forget the rule about using real names in the field.

"What the fuck happened?" Rose demanded, turning toward the concussed-and-trussed adversary as if she meant to kick some answers out of him. But the bad guy wasn't the one who spoke up.

"Those gauntlets he's wearing," Raven murmured. "I think they're magical."

Magic, the only other weakness Kryptonians had, the one Jason tended to forget about most of the time. _Magic_. He'd been struck by a magical object, wielded by someone who was probably a sorcerer of some kind, and now … now his powers had deserted him. It was everything he could do not to start retching right there.

Jason Kent was, for the first time in well over a decade, _human_.


	21. Coming in Louder Than Words

***faceplant in bed* Another late night, all. I had a speech prepared, but it's going to have to wait until next week. Just too worn out now. Enjoy!**

* * *

><p>"No, we're not calling Dad," Jason groused. Back at Titans Tower after Cassie had flown him there, he was presently being looked over by Tim and Raven. He winced when Tim shone a bright scope into his eye, and would've pulled away, but Cassie put her hand on his shoulder. Trying to move <em>her<em> was like trying to shove a boulder. _So this is what it's like for everyone else dealing with me,_ he thought morosely.

"You told me once your father lost his powers a long time ago," Tim said, quite sensibly.

"Yeah, but that was on purpose, and it wasn't magic," Jason insisted. "We don't need to tell him. I can figure this out, guys. It'll probably just take some sun. _Lots_ of sun. That's basically what did it for Dad, after all: the concentrated sunlight stored in the Fortress' main crystal assembly. The whole structure is a solar capacitor."

He was babbling. Jason was babbling and he knew it and he could no more stop than he could catch the panic-rat scurrying around in his brain wondering when the allergies would come back. When the weakness and wheezing would set in. He already felt like he had a cold coming on, and Jason hadn't had a cold since he was six.

"There are only residual traces of magic on him," Raven announced. "Whatever happened is complete."

"See? All I need is to recharge." An idea struck him, and he turned to Cassie. "Can you fly me up to the Fortress for a bit? I can probably talk Jor-El into giving me a boost, and then a good long sun-soak ought to fix it."

"Um, no," Cassie replied, looking at him in frank disbelief. "I am _so_ not breaking into the Fortress of Solitude. Not even for you."

Jason stared at her. "What? It's not breaking in, Cassie. _I'm a Super_."

She crossed her arms and looked stern. "And it's your dad's Fortress of Solitude, and you won't even tell him what's going on."

"I'm allowed to be there!"

"Are you allowed to go up there without telling him?"

Well, technically yes, because he'd never been _forbidden_ to go, but in actual practice Jason usually got a ride from Dad because flying was easier than jumping. Kala didn't really go anymore, just a few trips per year—if that. Nevada had iced over her desire to be the better Kryptonian, although she still spoke the language better than Jason could.

None of that mattered, because Cassie saw him hesitate, and she scowled. "No way. I'm not flying you up there if you're just going to get in trouble with him. And good luck hitchhiking."

It was no use explaining; Cassie didn't get it. "Fine," Jason spat, and turned to Tim. "Can you borrow the Bat-Wing?"

"Are you _serious_?!" Cassie exclaimed. Raven took that opportunity to leave, muttering something about researching the opponent who'd done this.

"Not right now. Maybe tonight," Tim said.

Relief flooded through Jason. He could get through a day as a human. Just one day. It would be all right. "Thanks, Tim."

Cassie threw her hands up in exasperation. "Are you both completely _nuts_?"

"Well _you_ weren't going to help me," Jason pointed out.

She looked over at Tim, but he said nothing, just glanced at her once. The rest of Jason's physical tests came up normal—_human_ normal, which was the furthest thing from normal for him. Cassie blew an irritated breath from her nostrils and glared at them both. "Okay, fine. You two boys go break into Superman's clubhouse looking for an answer that might not even be there."

"Cassie, shut up," Jason said. He'd had enough of her attitude. And wonder of wonders, she actually _did_, staring at him in utter shock. "One, we're not breaking in, I have every right to be there, it's more museum than clubhouse and _that heritage is __**mine**__, too_. Two, if you're not gonna help me, then just butt out until I get this taken care of. At least Tim's willing to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem."

Tim mouthed the word "_Careful_" while his back was to Cassie, giving Jason a pointed look, but he was way past being careful.

So was Cassie, apparently. "Are you even listening to yourself? Jason, you're being totally schizoid about this whole deal. And what makes you think you can talk to _me_ like that, anyway? Exactly how hard did you hit your head when you tripped over yourself?"

"Excuse you? Last I checked you were my girlfriend, you were supposed to be there for me in my hour of need, not flip out on me! Excuse me if I'm a little ticked off!"

"A _little_? You call this a little ticked off? You're biting my head off over everything I say!"

"This is so much more than that," Jason growled. "It's kind of sad that my girlfriend won't help me. Luckily my best friend will."

Cassie could have a sharp tongue on her when she felt she was in the right. So far in their relationship, and in the friendship before it, Jason had never run afoul of it. Today, however, both of their patience was gone, and she snapped right back at him. "Oh, yeah, go ahead and make this a 'bros before hos' thing. Just when I thought you weren't like the rest of the guys. One time you actually get hurt and I try to make you see sense, and here we are. _Great_."

"Nobody ever said that, Cassie," Tim interjected.

By doing so he earned himself a serving of Cassie's ire. "What? Don't take his side, Tim. You're supposed to be the smart one around here. Besides, you know half the superhero fandom already 'ships you two anyway, don't make it worse."

"Yeah, well, the other half of the fandom ships me with my _sister_, so nobody really pays attention to them," Jason snarled back. "They have no idea who we really are out of uniform—and whose loyalties are strongest."

"You're questioning _my_ loyalty now? When you're the one running like a scared kid, not wanting to talk to any of the people who could actually _help_? Dammit, Jason…."

"Oh boy, that's enough," Tim said sharply, before Jason could even open his mouth to respond. Not that he had anything coherent to say; his brain was a fog of terror and outrage. Distracted, they both looked at him, and Tim pointed to the door. "Cassie, out. Jason, relax."

"You're telling _me_ to get out?" Cassie sounded more shocked than anything else.

"Yes, I am. I've got a couple more tests I want to run, and I need Jason as calm as possible to keep from skewing the readings." That was Tim's team-leader voice, and though they might run the Titans as a triumvirate most of the time, right now he looked and sounded like a leader.

For one thing, he was the only calm person in the medical suite.

Cassie stared at him in utter disbelief—and hurt, Jason finally saw. Tim had successfully derailed him from the imminent explosion of temper, and only now did he realize just what a jerk he'd just been. It was too late, though. Cassie spun on her heel and stalked out, leaving them alone.

Jason fumed, but Tim put a hand on his shoulder. "Come on. Let's get through the rest of this testing."

"All right," Jason replied, tried to settle down. It wasn't exactly easy at the moment, but with just Tim in the room, he could almost manage it.

…

"So are you going to tell me where you were that day?"

Elise fought down the urge to scream at Corrin, and just gritted her teeth and glared at her textbook instead. She had failed to answer a text he sent her the other week to finalize dinner plans for the evening, and then been completely unavailable most of the day. It would've been okay if she was any good at making things up on short notice, but quite frankly, Elise just wasn't. Her excuse—that it was something embarrassingly personal she refused to discuss—was flimsy even by her own standards, and Corrin just would _not_ stop picking at it. And it wasn't like she could tell him she'd been strapped to a chair getting interviewed for a job she didn't even want.

She didn't want it, not really. The very last thing she wanted was to get even more involved in the superhero world. Coming to Berkeley had been the start of trying to have a normal life, something that seemed all too easy to forget about when she'd been with Jason. It had gotten to the point where hearing about him dismantling a giant robot with his bare hands was just another Tuesday, and after a while, the fact that that was her idea of normal now scared the hell out of her. Who was _she_ in the midst of all that?

Of course, if she took the job offer, she'd _know_ who she was in their world….

"Look, Elise, whatever it is, just _tell_ me, all right?" Corrin said.

Her head snapped up, lips curling back in a sneer, ready to just lambaste him. And then Elise saw the look on his face, almost pleading, definitely worried. Maybe even fearful. Like the look Jason got when she talked about taking time off.

_Jeez_, did he think she was _cheating_ on him? After all this time? Didn't he know that just wasn't in her nature? Jason had known, but Elise realized how much he was in her thoughts and kicked his memory away.

But how could she blame the guy? She'd disappeared on him, been totally unavailable, and now was refusing to talk about. Not to mention her ex was on her mind a lot lately…

…well, mostly because all of this was _his damned fault_. If she'd never gotten swept up in Jason Kent and his crazy life, Elise would be an ordinary college student right now. She never would've stowed away on a private plane or nearly gotten killed in Nevada, and she certainly wouldn't be attracting the attention of the freaking _Justice League of America_.

Of course, she never would've flown with Superman, or been trusted by his whole family, one of the very people few who knew the Supers in both their private and public lives. She never would've had the satisfaction of helping save her friend's life and defeat an evil madman, all at the age of sixteen.

She never would've understood why Jason tipped his head back and drank in the sun whenever he stepped into its light; never would've known that the warmth of his skin came from that same sun, a brightness she could savor even in the darkest room; never would've known the profound tenderness of him, who could throw a pickup truck like a fastball, wrapping his arms around her with all that strength carefully leashed.

And none of _that_ was helping her right now, with Corrin's brow still furrowed as he looked at her. Elise sighed and tried to figure out what to say.

_It's like this. I used to go out with Superboy. I know his real name, __**both**__ of them, and since I'm a science major and the JLA needs scientists on board, that got me tapped for a job offer. Said job offer involved making me believe I was about to be electrocuted, since they had to know if I could keep more than just the Supers' secrets. So yeah, sorry I couldn't answer the phone and missed dinner, I was too busy trying not to pee my pants when freaking __**Oracle**__ zapped me._

Oh yeah. That'd be great. Elise dropped her face into her palms. "Dammit, Corrin, _let it go_," she growled. "It's a matter of principle now. Last I checked I don't have your initials branded on my butt cheek, and I'm not your daughter either. I told you it was personal, I told you I wasn't seeing anyone else. Either you trust me, or you don't. That's it."

He sat in silence for a long moment, and when he finally spoke, the smallness of his tone wounded her. "Okay. Okay, Elise. Look, I'm sorry…."

She swore under her breath; she'd gone and hurt him, which was exactly what she hadn't meant to do. "No, Corrin, _I'm_ sorry. But this is how it has to be."

And in his eyes she saw not one iota of understanding.

…

Tim was eyeing the rest of the Fortress, but Jason paid little attention to him. He was entirely focused on Jor-El's thoughtful expression on the crystal wall across the room. Meanwhile the huge diagnostic crystal hovered within a hair's breadth of Jason's bare chest, its light pulsing so brightly that Jason's eyes were narrowed to slits. He was watching for some hint of the diagnosis in Jor-El's countenance. Hoping for an answer, something he could understand and work around.

Jason didn't like or trust magic. It was too _easy_, and that was coming from a guy who could bench-press a circus worth of elephants with no apparent effort. Magic also seemed to make up the rules as it went along. As a science major, fascinated by the complex but _logical_ forces that ruled the cosmos, the existence of magic upset his worldview.

And all of that was before it did something like this. Jason slammed down on that train of thought, forced to close his eyes as the crystal shone yet brighter. Standing here with the massive thing just above him was making him nervous, something he hadn't felt in the Fortress since he was a kid. But then, he hadn't worried about anything short of a building falling on him since he was seven or so.

The light died, and Jason looked up to his grandfather, hope beating in his chest. "It is strange," Jor-El intoned—in English, by Jason's request. Hearing him speak, Tim came back toward them both, his expression closed-off and neutral. Jason wanted him at least to know what was going on.

"How strange, Grandfather?" Jason asked as the diagnostic crystal retracted.

"It is the microcellular structures within each of your body's cells that fuel your powers, Jon-El. Kal-El chose to call them kryptonelles, in English. They absorb the rays of the yellow sun and return its power to you."

"I know this, Grandfather." He kept any impatience out of his tone. Jor-El could be pedantic, but he always had a point.

"The kryptonelles in your body are in perfect working order. The diagnostic crystal can find no flaw in them, or indeed in any of your systems. Yet the kryptonelles appear to be … dormant. For some reason they do not awaken and perform their function."

Jason swallowed, trying not to worry more. "Can they perhaps be stimulated?"

Jor-El's image nodded. "Perhaps. I already attempted to do so with the diagnostic crystal, but I was unsuccessful. There may be insufficient power within the Fortress itself."

That wasn't surprising. It was late winter, and the Fortress was above the Arctic circle, working on stored solar energy from the long polar summer. The last time Jor-El had jump-started a slumbering Kryptonian physiology, it had drained the Fortress completely. He wouldn't risk that again except in the most dire circumstances.

Sketching a bow to the image, Jason said, "Thank you, Grandfather. I shall seek an alternate power source."

"May you find it swiftly, Jon-El." They closed with traditional Kryptonian salutations, and then Jason grabbed his shirt and tugged it over his head. He already felt the chill in the air, something he'd never noticed here before. His metabolism normally kept him warm enough.

"Well, what do you want to do?" Tim asked. He'd been very quiet, but also very helpful, for which Jason would eventually remember to be grateful. At the moment his mind was running like an express train on narrow track.

"There's one more thing I want to try," he replied, grabbing up his jacket and putting that on as well. "My system just needs a jump-start, I think, and there's not enough solar power here. But I know where to get some."

Tim knew that meant high-altitude exposure. "Will you need the Bat-Wing? Because we've only got about another hour."

Jason shook his head, sliding his phone out of the jacket pocket. "Nah, I've got a line on a less-noticeable flyer. Even though I _hate_ flying with her, this one time Kal's gonna be a lifesaver."

Of course, his twin was going to give him unending hell about sending her a text _asking_ for a flight, but just at the moment he would welcome it as a return to normality.

"All right then," Tim said with a nod. "Let's get back. I've got one more thing I want to do tonight."

It was a mark of Jason's preoccupation that he never even asked what that one thing was.

…

"Hey, Cassie," Tim said quietly. It had taken him over an hour to find her, sitting on the roof of the Tower with her knees drawn up, staring out at the view. He'd expected her to have gone home, or gone out looking for trouble, but instead she'd stayed at the Tower.

She didn't even look around when he spoke. "How is he? Did the Fortress thing work?"

Tim sat down beside her. Cassie had no problem dangling her legs over the drop, while Tim preferred to straddle the parapet. Not that he was afraid of heights—no Robin was—but safety was not something to be ignored. Besides, this way he could look at her. "No, it didn't. The Fortress' diagnostics say there's nothing wrong with him. Everything's in perfect working order, it's just not fueling any powers right now. Kryptonian science can't tell why."

"He's gonna have to go to Zatanna. This is magic, and she knows more about it than anyone," Cassie said dully.

"Yeah, but going to her means going to the League, and he's still upset about that. He's going to try something else, and if that doesn't work I'll start on him about the League." Tim swung his feet idly, most of his weight balanced on his palms and seat bones, watching Cassie's face.

After a moment she spoke again. "If you've come to tell me what a horrible girlfriend I am, save it. I already know."

"You're not a horrible girlfriend," Tim told her.

Cassie turned to look at him sadly. "Oh yeah? Jason thinks I'm an insensitive cold-hearted _witch_."

"Jason isn't himself right now."

She chuckled bitterly. "Yeah, tell me about it. Whatever else the magic did to him, it pretty much shoved his head so far up his butt I'm surprised he can walk."

Taking a deep breath, Tim did his best to explain. This felt a little too much like telling Jason's secrets, but it needed to be done. Cassie simply didn't understand, and Jason was in no condition to tell her. Not coherently, anyway. "Look, Cassie … this is a huge deal to Jason."

She sighed hard enough to blow wispy blonde curls away from her face. "_I know._ The powers always are. I mean, my mom could take away my powers anytime she wanted until I turned eighteen, and I _hated_ that. But really, if it's temporary it's nothing to freak out about." She paused, Tim waiting, and then added in a smaller voice, "And if it's not temporary, well, freaking out won't help."

"This isn't about the powers." That got her full attention at last.

"What do you mean?" Cassie looked so sad, so lost and lonely, that Tim just wanted to hug her. But giving her information would be more worthwhile in the long run.

"Look, when Jason was a kid…" Tim trailed off, then decided to attack this from the science angle. "Jason and Kala are first-generation Kryptonian-human hybrids. Different species from different _galaxies_. There's no way it even makes sense for them to exist. And obviously there are some problems with hybridization even in closely-related species. With them, the problems were magnified."

Cassie's brow furrowed. "What kind of problems? They're both ridiculously healthy now. Jason's never had so much as a cold the whole time I've known him, and his sister is always full of energy, too."

"Yes, but that's _now_. He told me how it was when they were little. Both twins were allergic to gluten, dairy, eggs, shellfish, nuts, a whole bunch of stuff. When they were little they pretty much lived on macrobiotic shakes and meat-and-leafy-greens burritos. Jason had asthma, they both had a bunch of nutritional issues, and both of them were on steroids at the age of six just to try to build some muscle and deal with some of the allergies. There were immune system issues, too. He's showed me pictures from back then. Cassie … they were both so fragile. It's a wonder Lois Lane managed to keep them alive."

"What happened?" Her voice had dropped to a stunned whisper.

Tim continued the story with an angry curl of his lip for one of the principals. "When they were six, Lex Luthor figured out who their father is and kidnapped them. He was keeping them both on an island made of impure kryptonite—and neither of them is immune. The bastard almost killed them both just to get Superman in range. And then he almost killed Superman. If Kala hadn't attacked him…."

"Wait, Kala attacked him? At six years old?" Cassie's eyebrows went up in disbelief.

Nodding, Tim let himself smile again. "She's a fighter, Cassie. According to Jason, she _bit_ Luthor for threatening her dad. And Luthor threw her off the side of the island into the ocean. In November."

Cassie looked stricken. "Oh my God."

Tim let himself think, just for a moment, about what could've happened. The world could have lost Superman that day, as well as Superboy and the Blur. Tim could've lost his best friend, someone who understood all the geeky stuff he loved, before he even _met_ Jason.

He shook off the dark thought before it could really sink in. "Lucky for us, Superman saved them both. He needed the sunlight for himself, to cure the kryptonite poisoning, and it worked on them, too. Somehow the sunlight kicked their powers into high gear, and both of them were in perfect health by the end of the month. Jason went from taking seven different drugs every day to not even needing cold medicine."

"Oh," she whispered, biting her lip.

Tim put one hand on her shoulder. "It's not like it was for you, Cassie. Jason was never a normal human. For as much like a regular guy as he seems, he's never really _been_ one. And he's scared out of his mind that his powers are gone for good, and that if they are, all those health problems will come back too."

"Sweet mother of … he thinks he's gonna die." Cassie groaned, smacking her palm against her forehead. "And I'm so damn helpful. He must hate me."

"He's not gonna die. We both know that." Tim left unspoken the fact that the two of them would do anything—including going behind Jason's back and talking to the League—to make sure he got better.

He smiled and added, "And he doesn't hate you, Cassie. He loves you and he's freaking out because he can't figure out how to fix this on his own. Give him time. He'll get settled."

She finally smiled back, and leaned in to hug him. "Thanks, Tim."

"You're welcome," he said. "Just don't tell him I told you."

"Oh, I won't. I'm not that horrible." Her chuckle was weak, but it was there, and that was all Tim needed.

…

Jason Todd had crossed the border at Niagara Falls and felt American soil beneath his feet for the first time in way too long. It hadn't been difficult. He had good papers; they'd been easy to get, there were lots of guys with his general build and coloring, and he had simply stolen a passport from someone who probably wouldn't even look for it for a few days. All the things that made Jay so distinctive and so deadly were skills and attributes that weren't easy to spot at a casual glance. He had upped his chances by taking an open slot in a tour group, so Customs had just waved him by with the rest of the herd, not even taking a second glance at him. Easy-peasy.

Home, back home, and within five minutes Jay had found a vendor selling chili dogs out of a cart on the sidewalk. He'd bought three, loaded up with chili, cheese, onions, and plenty of mustard. The actual hot dog meat was nothing to write home about, and the chili probably came out of a can, but the whole combination was somehow more delicious than any of the fancy high-priced meals Talia had ever ordered for him.

Her name brought a flare of anger. _Trust no one._ That was his motto from here on out, with one little addendum: _especially not beautiful women who want to give you lots and lots of money_.

Heh. Jay could bet _she_ couldn't walk across the U.S. border as easily he did. Then again, her old man was the granddaddy of all terrorists, wasn't he? He made bin Laden and company look like small-timers.

Chowing down on the chili dogs, Jay had ambled with the crowd. He had accounts in Switzerland and the Grand Caymans, a couple grand in mixed bills and traveler's checks, plus thirty thousand dollars in gold and diamonds secreted in his clothes and luggage. There were additional funds, weapons, and other assets—along with the toys he'd managed to bring along—waiting in P.O. boxes in four or five locations, sent before he'd even left Europe.

The new TSA rules made it a lot harder to fly armed, so he'd had to content himself with relying on the air marshals in case of trouble. _Yeah, right_. He'd been the most dangerous thing on the plane, and that was even true while he slept.

He'd brought the _kriss_, of course, and that had been a real challenge. Jay wasn't about to let that knife out of his hands even for a few minutes. It was too damned useful. Properly honed, the thing would cut just about anything. Jay had no idea whether or not there was some kind of mystic al Ghul mumbo-jumbo attached to it; as far as he was concerned, it just _worked_. In the end he'd had to stash it where he couldn't draw it quickly. It was still with him, and never out of his sight for more than three seconds.

Besides, he was more than capable of dealing with most threats with just his fists and feet. And brain, of course. _The mind is the most powerful weapon of all_. That was another al Ghul saying, one he'd heard first from Bruce.

_His_ mind was full of plans and backups … and roadmaps. Jay needed to get back to Gotham, where the rest of his arsenal was cached. By now Bruce might've found some of it, but he'd been a busy little squirrel the last time he was in town, and there should've still been plenty of tasty nuts to see him through the winter.

Even if the worst had happened and the big bad Bat had stolen it all, Jay could be back in business pretty quick. It would take him less than a week to figure out which of the crooks in town had the best armory, and then just take their stuff. No trying to control the crime this time around, no negotiations, no taking kickbacks. He'd just kill the rottenest bastards he could find. And in Gotham, that would be a pretty tough competition, considering the average level of rot.

Of course, he still had the problem of getting to Gotham. Getting from Niagara to Buffalo had been easy; he'd just gotten on the convenient hotel shuttle with the rest of the tour group. Of course, Jay wasn't going to stay in the tour's hotel. Too bright, too crowded, too obvious. He slipped away to consider his options. With only one wheeled carry-on bag, he could step into any coffee shop and not look out of place while he perused his options.

Boosting a car was out. It was the simplest method of transportation, but a car would get reported stolen, and that might get him pulled over. Jay didn't want to shoot an honest cop if he could help it. And out here, more of them were honest than in Gotham.

Greyhound bus was a no-go. Too crowded, no room to maneuver, he'd be antsy and paranoid the whole time. And flying was just plain dumb. If Bruce was looking for him to return, he'd be scoping the airport.

Now, _train_ travel, that was a good compromise. A sleeper compartment for some privacy and room to stretch out, plus it was kind of under the radar. Most people didn't even think about passenger trains anymore. Bruce did, of course, and he'd be watching the train terminal, but Jay wasn't going to make it easy.

Jay had found no flaws with that plan, and the trip was quite luxurious—Buffalo to New York, and then switching trains to head southward. He'd actually bought a ticket to Charlotte, North Carolina, just to allay suspicions. And when he got off the train, it wasn't in Gotham City. No, Jay hopped off in Metropolis and slipped away into the city.

So much different than Gotham, so much brighter and shinier, but Jay had a knack for finding the dark, gritty crevices of any city, and sliding into them like a long-lost home. Metropolis had them too, and two Franklins slipped across the motel desk to a shifty-eyed clerk got him a clean, comfy room—to his standards of clean and comfy—without having to show any ID or make any sort of record that he'd stayed there.

There was no real reason to stay a night in Metropolis, except that it broke his trail. Jay didn't know if Talia still had people tracking him; he hadn't seen any for days. It would be like her to let him run for a while, her bloodhounds carefully staying a week behind him, just to let him feel secure before she pounced.

Part of him hoped she'd send someone after him, just so he'd have a fight that really tested his skills. Most of him thought that was freaking stupid, she had the money and the manpower to hunt him for the rest of his life, so why give her any incentive to do so? He'd slipped his leash, what was between them was done, and maybe she'd seen that and let him go.

Jay thought Talia might be capable of doing that. Her father sure as hell wasn't, and as jealous as he was over the damn Lazarus Pits, Jay ought to watch his back-trail to make sure Ra's al Ghul wasn't hunting him, too.

A night in Metropolis made no sense when his goal was Gotham—as everyone who knew anything about him would guess. And that was precisely why he did it. Jay was the wildcard, he knew when to be unpredictable, and more than once it had saved his life.

Tomorrow he'd research shipping schedules, and after nightfall he'd stow away on a truck bound for Gotham City. No track to follow, no ticket to trace, and no one would question the various items he'd retrieved and stashed in his luggage. Of course, that left him with a night to himself during which he had no plans except to keep an eye out for anyone trying to find him.

Time to be unpredictable again. Jay picked up a few items of clothing and some other accessories; with five minutes of effort he looked like the kind of person who _pretended_ to be a punk, but was actually about as dangerous as a bunny slipper. And then he went cruising the club district. Lots of crowds there, but safe for him to roam—he was the only one armed, for one thing. Oh, some of the Goth kids might think they were being daring by carrying some kind of fancy dagger, but Jay had five throwing knives hidden on his person, the _kriss_ lying against the nape of his neck, and a blackjack in his pocket. Any of which could've gotten him arrested, but if he got to the point where a cop was frisking him, he was already screwed.

Jay wandered, letting his mind idle, not looking for anything specific but just trying to pick up on patterns. People who didn't flow with the crowd, maybe the same person spotted twice, or the sort of stance and gait that betrayed a lifetime of martial arts training. He saw a whole lot of nothing, just kids being kids. They were more or less his age, but none of them had a fraction of a clue about how the world really worked. All of them thought they were so edgy and cool. Jay chuckled under his breath. Had he ever been so painfully naïve?

Eventually he drifted into an alleyway and melted into the shadows, leaning against the wall of a club. No one came after him, not even when he handed them this perfect opportunity, and he began to relax a little.

That was when he noticed the music. Sure, the thumping bass transmitted perfectly well through the cinderblock wall, but he could hear guitars, too. Somewhere a door was open. Good vocal work, the guy singing could carry a tune, a nice roughness to his singing. Not Jay's genre, but not bad. Not like the caterwauling he'd heard spilling forth from some of the places he'd passed.

And then another voice came in, a woman's voice, with ringing purity that knifed him even out here. _She_ didn't need a microphone; whoever she was, she had a helluva set of lungs on her to project her voice that well without screaming.

"_We have the force to fight!_" rang out from the guy who'd been singing before, and the woman chimed in with "_We have the blinding light!_" Then both of them sang "_We have the will to win, forever we'll defend._"

The music roared, drowning out the next verse, but Jay listened, intrigued. A moment later he heard the voices again, singing in unison. "_We have the force to fight, we have the blinding light! A war is more than heard, coming in louder than words! Louder … __**louder**__ … coming in … __**louder than words**__!_"

The crowd went nuts as they repeated the refrain, and to Jay's surprise he was grinning. It might be some kind of goofy Goth-rock, but the singers sounded ferocious enough to please him.

He didn't go inside, though. With his luck they'd both be classic American couch potatoes stuffed into too much leather and lace, and the woman's golden voice would be matched to a face only a fanboy could love. Better to just listen.

And so thinking, Jay moved out of the alley and on with his life, past the marquee proclaiming that the Stone Chronicles were featured that night, and with no idea just _who_ he'd been listening to.


	22. That Old Black Magic

**I am officially giving away this immune system. What the hell is it in Florida the last few months that we are getting every damn virus and bug in the world and it's ALL being passed through retail? UGH.**

**That said, sorry this is late, all. Anissa and I both have sore throats and some sort of stomach bug. I don't even. Healthy, what is that? Some sort of promised land? *headdesk***

* * *

><p>Mad Dog Lane was back. Lois had spent the morning sweating various sources by phone, and part of the afternoon doing research in the Hall of Records. Kal-El had finessed some of his sources too, and tagged along for the records search. His speed-reading ability was immensely useful there, especially combined with his ability to look straight through a stack of files, reading each one along the way.<p>

Lastly, they went to see Inspector Sawyer—or Lois did. Kal-El got one of _those_ emergency calls, but it wasn't like she needed a super-powered protector to see an old friend. At least, not when she arrived bearing scotch.

Maggie opened the door to see Lois' smiling face and a bottle of Glenmorangie The Nector d'Or. Her response was less than welcoming. "What do you want, Lane?"

"Is that any way to talk to your best friend in the Fourth Estate?" Lois asked.

At that, Maggie actually guffawed. "I think Tobie might be my actual best friend in journalism, Lois."

"She's your wife. There's a difference."

"Says the girl who married her best buddy from around the office."

"What can I say? Clark makes a mean cup of coffee."

"Yeah, he also makes a damn good set of twins," Maggie shot back, her glacial blue eyes dancing with amusement.

"Don't get any ideas, Mags," Lois taunted with a smirk, and Maggie laughed back at her.

The banter back and forth was just a warm-up. Arriving with scotch meant Lois was on the hunt for a story, and Maggie _really_ disliked being a source. But hell, they were both after the same thing: justice. Neither of them liked it when scumbags managed to evade punishment for their crimes, but Maggie was inhibited by due process and the search and seizure laws. She couldn't investigate based on a hunch.

She _could_ investigate based on a meticulously-researched front-page article published in the city's biggest newspaper, though, and that would convince her to play ball. Raines would howl, of course. Tobie had told Lois more than once to marry her own damn cop and stop stealing _hers_.

Lois had repeated that remark to Kal-El once, and he had smiled. "Not a cop. I never forget that I operate without official sanction, although I'm on the same team with the police. Sometimes I think of myself as a hall monitor of sorts, though." And that remark was pure Clark Kent, through and through. Lois had rolled her eyes.

Maggie finally sighed and stepped out of Lois' way. "You're lucky to catch me at home, y'know."

"Yeah, well, I called the office first," Lois replied, setting down the scotch and taking a seat at Maggie's kitchen table.

"And they actually told you I was home? That's a breach of procedure." Despite the hour, Maggie poured them each a cup of coffee. Reporters and cops drank the stuff twenty-four hours a day.

Lois took her coffee and sipped it. Milder than the newsroom brew, but then, Maggie actually cleaned out her coffee maker at home instead of letting it develop a patina of pure caffeine. "No, they told me you were unavailable, and I didn't hear anything from my source in the D.A.'s office that would lead me to think you were there, so I took a chance that you might be home early. Must be nice, being one of the big wigs." She smiled to show that the teasing was just that.

Maggie had the throaty laugh of a long-term smoker, and sat down with her own coffee. "Says the assistant editor of the _Daily Planet_."

"Not this week." And even then, even when she knew Perry meant it as much as a way of letting her blow off steam as a reprimand, Lois still seethed a little.

"You got demoted?" Maggie arched a blonde brow.

"I ran away from a boring conference, and now the Chief is smacking my hand to teach me better," Lois said drolly. "But, I am _still_ the best damn reporter under that roof, and I've got my teeth in a story. Actually it was my up-and-comer who found it first, but this one's big."

"This is the banking scandal in Chinatown, right?" Maggie said.

"So there _is_ an investigation," Lois said, her eyes alight. "Oh, and I didn't bring a tape recorder, and you're totally off the record, Mags."

"There's really not much to tell." The blonde sighed, looking at the scotch as if there were answers in the golden liquor.

Lois just leaned forward, one elbow on the table, and propped her chin on her hand. Maybe it was time to wheedle. "Tell me anyway?"

"The whole doe-eyes thing doesn't work when I know damn well there's more Cujo than Bambi in your DNA, Lo," Maggie informed her.

Well, they always got around to straight talk eventually. No amount of bribery, threats, or begging would move Inspector Sawyer, but it was just possible that she might impart some information if there was a good reason for it. And to Lois' mind, there was always a good reason, or she wouldn't be there in the first place.

She sighed and ran a hand through her hair, organizing her thoughts. "Mags, I think Joeng Oi-Kan has got his fingers in a whole lot of pies, and none of them are legal and above-board. We're talking _big_. Like, everything from insider trading to illegal immigrants being outright _sold_ to massage parlors to some kind of banking scandal. Oh, and just possibly espionage, but I don't think I can find proof of that. And I have a _week_ to run it down before Perry drags me back into that office by the scruff of my neck and makes me a damn _administrator_ again. And then there's also Suen and Lei and a couple others, but Joeng is the one I want to reel in."

Maggie stared at her a moment, and finally said, "All right. Informants tell us that there was a run on Suen's bank during the worst of the recession. That's when Joeng turned up on the scene. Apparently Joeng bailed him out."

"Wait. Joeng has that kinda money, he bailed out an entire _bank_?" That boggled Lois' mind. It was bad enough dealing with Lana, also known as Mama Warbucks, and her tendency to pick up expenses if she wasn't stopped—oh, and casually drop trust funds on the kids. Picturing someone with enough money to bail out a bank was quite frankly scary.

The blonde shrugged. "He does, or his friends do. And when certain people hear that Joeng has deposited fifty million in a bank, they think it's probably gonna last a while."

"So tell me about Joeng's friends," Lois asked.

That earned her a bitter smile. "Look, we know Joeng has been a very, _very_ bad boy, but he's made of freakin' Teflon. Everything slides right off him. Every case we've tried to bring, the D.A. won't let it go to trial for lack of evidence. And he's right. If we swing and miss, he'll just run home, and then we won't be able to extradite him for any other crimes we find. But he _likes_ this country, the way a fat man likes a big juicy steak, so he'll stay as long as he can. Probably laughing at us the whole time, thinking we're too stupid to catch him."

Lois chewed her lip thoughtfully. "You just need something to nail him with that he can't wiggle off of."

"All we need is solid evidence connecting Joeng to organized crime, or to the brothels, or to Lei and military secrets. But Lois—don't get too close. These people don't play."

"Are you trying to tell me it's too hot for me?" Lois shot back, outraged. "You think the boys at Stryker's Island play? How about the mob? Or that senator who was so deep in misuse of campaign funds he thought it'd be a good idea to throw me off a train? Huh, Mags? Or how about Lex fucking Luthor, hmm? Also known as the reason I shoot with the other hand now."

Her furious voice had all the finality of a door slamming shut on a tomb, and Maggie sat back, staring at her. "Lo, listen. I can't ask you to go breaking and entering and running around playing spy versus spy with these guys. The last informant we had got made, and we found him floating in the bay minus several important bits—and that was before the fish started on him. It's not that I think there's anyone in this whole city who can put one over on Mad Dog Lane. It's just … I'm getting to a point in my life where I really, really can't stand to zip any more friends into body bags."

"Don't worry about me, Mags," Lois said, reaching out to cover the blonde's hand with hers. "I've got the brains and the guts and more years of reporting experience than I'll ever admit to, but I also have one thing that trumps all of that."

"Oh yeah?" Maggie said, clearly amused by her gumption.

Lois made sure to enunciate clearly, her eyebrows darting up. "Three magic little words I like to call: close air support."

At that, Maggie laughed. "All right. Take your superhero and go find yourself a story, and find _me_ something to nail this sonofabitch with. Just be careful, dammit!"

As Lois left, she knew she was immediately going to go against that. Kal-El really hated to be part of anything that involved breaking and entering, and she only had a couple hours when she could be reasonably sure Suen's office would be unoccupied. Maybe her wonderful yet law-abiding husband would stay preoccupied just long enough.

Then all she had to do was break into a bank.

…

It had been toward the end of the set for their performance at Thee Imperial when Kala felt a goose walk over her grave. Something was wrong; panic tightened her heart for a minute. For a moment, her voice nearly went out with the wave of fear, but she got it under control. Only Sebast seemed to notice, though he let it go when she winked at him.

The feeling didn't stop, just lingered enough to feel electric on her skin, made her feel edgy. Only one thing ate at her like this, nagged and didn't let go. It was Jason. It had to be something wrong with Jason.

Kala held on until after their opening set was over, hoping and praying that it wasn't something immediate. God, wouldn't it just figure that he'd need her when she was in a far-too-public place? Once they were offstage, she pulled out her phone and sighed with relief to see that whatever was wrong, he'd had time to text her. Although the news she found there didn't make her feel any better. This merited a lot more than a phone call. And now she knew exactly why her twin had to have been freaking out.

Backstage, Kala made some excuses to the guys and headed out. Good thing Sebast had been wiped out or he would have volunteered to come with her. It was only around ten when they had wrapped. Really, it would've been simpler to tell the truth—she was going to see her brother, after all—but Dustin was Jason's best friend and would be curious. Too curious. Especially since it was the middle of the school week. As it was, volunteering to pick up some meds while she was out did the trick.

Now all she had to do was to get out there and hope that what Jase was worried about wasn't as big deal as she thought it was. Her twin hadn't been forthcoming in his texts, but the fact that he was asking _her_ to take him for a power-up spoke volumes. Kala found him in his dorm, unaware that Tim had insisted he get some studying done while he was waiting for his sister.

Blurring past campus security and into the dorm, she slowed as she entered the floor where Jason was staying. Her presence got a couple of looks from people in the hall; Kala hadn't bothered to change out of her stage outfit, and Goth rockers were rare enough at Johns Hopkins to cause comment. Not that Kala noticed. She was comfortable in her own skin, velvet, and cat-eye liner. Right now, her main priority was her dorky hero brother.

"Hey, Kal," he said, opening the door and shaking his head at the sight of her. "Or should I say Elvira?"

"C'mon, Lizardboy." Not a good sign, his looking this mournful. And tired. What the hell had he been fighting this time? But what he needed now more than concern was reassurance. And she needed to know what was going on. "Let's get this show on the road. Or the roof, as the case may be."

He followed her to the stairs, and once they were on the rooftop, Kala said, "Scope out anyone watching."

After an embarrassed pause, Jason muttered. "I can't."

Kala raised an eyebrow. There was that cemetery goose again. "What do you mean, you _can't_? You ran yourself down _that_ low, you don't even have telescopic vision anymore? What the hell have you been up to today?"

"Something like that," he agreed. Jason's innocent face fooled most other people, but Kala had always seen through him. She crossed her arms and stared until he sighed and gave up. "Kal … I was in a fight earlier today, and I got hit with some magic, and … my powers are gone."

Her spine turned to ice at that. "_Gone_?" Kala whispered. "You mean, all of them? Completely gone?"

By way of answer, he tilted his head and showed her the abraded skin on his jaw. "I tried to jump back to HQ, and fell flat on my face. This was _hours_ ago, Kal."

The deep chill taking residence in her soul wanted her to flee. Such a small injury, but the fact that it hadn't healed spoke of many more dark possibilities. If this could happen to him, it could happen to _her_, too, and what would she do without flight to soothe her heart and quiet her mind? To hover in the sunlight was her personal form of meditation, the only perfect stress relief available to her. Flying, and singing her heart out on stage, let Kala feel completely like _herself_.

But this was her twin, he needed her to be the strong one, and Kala could no more turn her back on him than she could abandon her own right hand. It was hard to imagine now exactly what he must be going through with this. Kala flung her arms around him and squeezed him in a hug that said everything she couldn't express. "It's gonna be okay. We're going to figure this out, I promise."

"That's usually my line," he mumbled, hugging her back.

"Yeah, well, now it's my turn," Kala said. "So you think we need to jump-start the powers?"

Jason nodded. "I went to the Fortress and got Jor-El to scan me. He says everything is fine, just dormant. He couldn't boost me up with what the Fortress has stored, though. So I'm thinking, a concentrated dose of sunlight might do the trick."

"I can do that," Kala said confidently, and shifted her grip so she was holding her brother's forearms. "Hang on tight—next stop, the sun-drenched skies of Midway Island." It was earlier in the day there, and the tropical sunlight would be at full blast.

Jason frowned. "Isn't that way out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? Kala, I don't know…."

"Gotta go where the sun is," she said cheerfully, and took off.

Kala moved fast enough that those who looked up at Jason's trailing-off yelp of terror saw nothing amiss in the sky above them.

…

There were certain things Lois Lane always kept in her purse and would never be without: a couple of pens for writing down information, a hairbrush for taming her mane, some cash for a quick bribe or cab fare, a couple of credit cards in case of emergency and also to loid certain locks. The bank was going to take a lot more than an old AmEx card to get into, however, which was why she had a set of lock picks sewn into the lining of said purse. Not the cheap ones you could get out of a catalog that sold aluminum sword replicas and fake World War II memorabilia, either. _These_ picks would've gotten her arrested in a heartbeat, just for having them. Maggie knew, but she pretended not to.

In any case, there was a whole lot more security at the bank's corporate office than just locks. Guards patrolled outside and in, though she noticed that they seemed to move more smartly around the ground floor. She didn't want to tangle with them. Lois had her Ladysmith, in case the security _here_ was more like hired thugs, but she wouldn't use that except in the most extreme circumstance.

Casing the place, she could see only one plausible way in: the rooftop door. Unlike the ground-floor entrances, which had keycard locks, it had a padlock she could pick. That meant Lois had to get to the roof first, though, and Kal-El could've come in handy there. Not that he would help her, of course. Breaking and entering were against his rules, so it was just as well he was distracted at the moment.

In the end, Lois managed to climb one fire escape that had been carelessly left down, get from that building's roof to the one next door by simply stepping over a parapet, since they were built right up against each other, and then come to the bank office. Here she had a problem. The corporate office was a little distance away from the building she was on, just enough to give the workers a view of brick walls through their windows. Five or six feet.

Lois knew she was physically capable of jumping that. She also knew that trying to do so, with a five-story drop below and her history of bad luck with heights, was stupid. There was nothing up here she could use to bridge her way across, either. Not without giving herself away to the guards patrolling below. And she couldn't call Kal-El for help. He'd pull her away and berate her.

She blew an irritated breath out from her nostrils. Twenty years ago, Lois would've jumped it. Back in those days she'd been reckless and wild, and something like this wouldn't even faze her. But now … now she couldn't help thinking of the _finality_ of the fall. Sure, Kal-El would rescue her. If he could get here in time.

That kind of thinking disgusted her, and Lois turned away, retracing her steps. She ended up on the side street behind the bank's corporate office, and finally her luck turned.

A woman was leaving the office, wearing smart red suit and carrying a briefcase. And Lois was in the perfect position to see through the smoked-glass door as the woman opened it, noting that the guard's desk was presently unoccupied. So the only thing standing between Lois and easy access to the building was a keycard.

Just like the one the woman had carelessly dropped into her open purse as she took out her phone and made a call.

_Pickpocketing is a lesser offense than burglary, anyway,_ Lois thought, and walked on staring down at her phone as if reading a text. Just as she reached the woman, who stepped to the left to avoid her, Lois looked up as if startled and stepped to her right. They crashed into each other, both phones hitting the ground and both women apologizing for the impact. "Sorry, you know how it is," Lois said with a charming smile as she knelt to pick up the other woman's phone.

"I know," the woman chuckled, getting Lois' phone and handing it over. Lois grinned and thanked her.

A professional could've done it more smoothly, sure, but the woman certainly didn't notice her badge and keycard had made their way into Lois' purse at some point during the incident, and that was all that mattered.

…

Kala was trying to be nice, flying slower and more smoothly than usual, but all Jason's brain could comprehend was the vastness of the Pacific Ocean. Dotted here and there with atolls, it seemed a never-ending expanse of blue, and the only thing keeping him safe and dry was his sister's hold on him. Knowing he didn't like heights, or the thought of being stranded out here, she wasn't complaining about the grip he had on her elbows.

The sun drenched him, and Jason felt nervous sweat prickle at the nape of his neck. By the time it beaded on his forehead, he realized it wasn't just from anxiety, it was also from the heat. Something he hadn't experienced since he was a little kid. Jason groaned, squeezing his eyes shut. "Kal, it's not working."

"Give it time," she insisted.

So they waited, Jason swallowing nervously and looking down at the water only a few dozen feet below. "Do we have to be so low?" he asked.

"Well, I'm hoping the light reflecting off the water will bounce back up for an extra boost," Kala said. "Also I'm watching for sharks."

"Sharks?" Jason was shocked to hear his own voice sound so weak. Under normal circumstances he had nothing to fear from a shark. Heck, he and Kala had pummeled Bizarro around the North Atlantic not that long ago, and not once had he worried about what might lurk under the waves. But right now, his invulnerability was gone, and he couldn't help thinking that to a shark he was just another meaty snack.

Kala replied obliviously, "Yeah, you know that shark-tagging program I was watching last summer? Where they catch the great whites alive and put a tag on them to see what they're doing? Some of them come out this way, but no one's quite sure why. I always kind of hope I'll see one in the wild."

Jason groaned. That was his sister—if there was a weird, potentially dangerous, generally freaky animal, she liked it. "Could we maybe _not_ see one today? You know, with your not-so-invulnerable brother hanging around?"

"Jase." Kala looked at him, and pulled him close for a hug. "I won't drop you. And if any shark _did_ try to take a chunk out of my brother, they'd find themselves pretty personally endangered."

"You always did fight my battles for me." He smiled sadly, thinking of all the times in grade school he'd refused to raise a hand to a bully—only to see Kala run up screaming and flailing. Seeing her pile in like that, even to someone who made a career out of picking on littler kids, almost made him feel sympathy for the poor unsuspecting bully. Even more so once she'd learned what 'kick 'em in the jools!' really meant.

"Yeah, well, someone had to look after you." Kala smooched his cheek, leaving a smear of dark lipstick.

Jason scrubbed at it. "Don't they make lipstick now that doesn't come off all over the place?"

"Not in my colors," Kala said proudly.

While they waited for the sun to charge him up, they fell to discussing mundane things: the other students in his classes, the guys in her band, what mutual friends were up to. The only one they didn't discuss was Elise. "Oh, and Kristin wants _pink_ streaks now, in time for Valentine's day," Kala added.

Rolling his eyes, Jason just said, "Lana's gonna kill you."

"Nah. I bought Kristin the clip-ins in five colors. Among other things. What're _you_ getting her for her birthday?"

"Never you mind," Jason said haughtily. He'd already bought Kristin a decent telescope, so they could look at the stars together, but he also needed a slightly more girly gift and was having trouble choosing one. He'd probably have to enlist Cassie … if she was still speaking to him.

"Whoa, brother mine. You seriously just looked like someone stole your iguana. What's up?" Kala's worried brow looked exactly like their Mom's, and he couldn't help responding the same way.

"It's Cassie. I … I was kind of a jerk to her. She wanted me to tell Dad, and … I don't want to go running to him with this. I mean, I'm supposed to be one of the unofficial leaders of the Titans. What kind of hero am I if I have to run to Daddy all the time? This is _my_ problem, I'll handle it."

His twin stared at him for a long moment, and then _let go_ with one hand just so she could smack him upside the head. "One, you're a dork. Two, flowers, chocolate, abject apology, foot rub. Trust me. Three, you're the kind of hero who has some frikkin' _sense_, Jase. The whole reason you guys have _teams_ is so you can support each other, so you're not all flying blind like Daddy and Diana and Bruce and Ollie and everyone else were back when they started out. Don't you remember all the arguments Mom and Daddy had over him trying to do everything himself? Four, if this doesn't work, Jason, we're going to Daddy, and that's that. I'll fly you to HQ myself, and you know damn well you can't just let go or anything."

He had to hang his head. Kala was right, and there was no denying it.

There was also no denying the fact that he didn't feel any better after hovering in the sun this long, and in fact, Jason thought he was starting to get a sunburn. "All right, Kal. Let's go back," he murmured, defeated.

…

Kal-El had been busy dealing with a freak storm that had caused an airplane to crash into the ocean, but when the message came through on his comm that he was needed at Titans Tower, he wrapped things up as quickly as he could. He arrived to find most of the current Titans roster hanging around conspicuously, and once he walked into the comm room, both of his children sitting there looking despondent—along with a very nervous Cassie Sandsmark and a very serious Tim Drake. "What's going on?" he asked.

"Hi, Dad," Jason said wanly. "I, um … well, what happened was…." He squirmed miserably, and for one horrible moment the worst possibilities flashed through Kal-El's mind. Off the top of his head he could only think of two things that could make Jason _this_ ashamed of himself, and he hadn't heard about any civilians or even villains getting injured lately, so could it be…? _Please tell me Cassie's not…_.

"Lizardboy got punched by a sorcerer," Kala put in, looking just as grim as Jason sounded. "And now he's powerless. I tried taking him for a sun-boost, but zilch."

"All right," Kal-El said, his mind racing. _That_ was worse than the possibilities he'd had in mind. He knew what it was to lose his powers, how it felt to be suddenly human after a lifetime of being Super. And it was probably worse for Jason. Kal-El had never truly been human, showing powers from the day he arrived. His son remembered what it meant to be vulnerable to every virus and allergy and everything else.

Kal-El stepped forward, placing his hand on his son's shoulder and looking into his eyes seriously. "We're gonna get through this, son. First, let's get to the Fortress and have Jor-El check you out."

"Already did that," Jason said in a small voice.

He blinked. "You went to the Fortress?" It wasn't that Jason wasn't allowed; the Fortress was for _all_ the sons and daughters of Krypton here on Earth. But without his powers, how had Jason managed that? Kala must've flown him.

Cassie winced at the mention of the Fortress, but Kal-El wasn't paying much attention to her or Tim at the moment. Meanwhile Jason nodded slowly. "Jor-El says there's nothing wrong with me. The kryptonelles are just … dormant. He did a full scan and tried to boost my powers, but he can't charge me up the way he did you without wrecking the place again."

"Well, we don't want that," Kal-El said with a small smile. All four kids were looking up at Kal-El then, obviously expecting him to have a solution. That was what Superman did, right? Swoop in, save the day, fly off with a wave. If only it were that easy now, when his son was the one in danger. "Okay. Let's get this straightened out. Jason, tell me exactly how it happened."

Jason sighed mournfully. "Dad, I'm not even sure _what_ happened. All I remember is Cassie hitting the sorcerer, him blocking it, me wading in after the guy and grabbing him, and then he punched me in the head. Next thing I knew I was flat on the ground, waking up."

"And you didn't block the punch, because it's been a while since you had to," Kal-El mused.

His son looked ashamed. "I should've. I was trained to. Bad habit to get out of."

Kal-El put a hand on his shoulder. "It's not your fault, son. Invulnerability means we can concentrate on disarming an opponent instead of having to defend."

Tim spoke up then. "The sorcerer claims he bought his gear—probably _stole_ it, since it's quite a bit better than what he's actually capable of—and all he knows is there's an enchantment on them that protects him from harm. Raven examined the gauntlets and said the spell also turns an attacker's force back on them. But she can't figure out how that managed to negate Jason's powers, or how to turn them back on."

And Raven was pretty much the magic specialist for the current group of Titans. Kal-El sighed. He knew the kids were expecting him to make it all better, but maybe it was time they learned that no one had _all_ the answers. "Well, Jason, you've pretty much done exactly what I would've suggested already. So now we have to go find someone who knows more than either of us do about magic."

Jason didn't look precisely _relieved_, but he looked less miserable and more hopeful, and that was good enough for his father. "Who?"

"Zatanna," Kal-El replied. "Just let me run a request through the JLA and get an appointment to go see her. In the meantime, Tim, we'll have to pull Jason off the roster."

"Already done," Tim said. Jason looked wounded at that, and Tim turned to him seriously. "I know you were trained to operate with your powers at low ebb, but we can't risk it. You've had years of fighting with super-strength and invulnerability, and those create habits that can be lethal in the wrong kind of fight. We need you too much to run that kind of risk."

And that news was too clearly a crushing disappointment. Kal-El put his arm around his son's shoulders. "We'll work this out, Jason. One way or another. Now come on, let me get you back to school, and I start working on a meeting with Zee. Kala?"

"I've still got some time. I'll fly along with you," she said, and gave a light punch to Jason's arm. "C'mon, Dopey."

"Wait," Jason said, and shrugged away from both of them, turning back to his friends, holding his hands out to Wonder Girl. "Cassie? Cassie, I'm sorry. I freaked out, I was a jackass to you, and you were right. I'm sorry."

"No, Jason, _I'm_ sorry," she said, and dove into his arms for a long hug. "I didn't know, and I didn't bother to _think_ why this would be a bigger deal for you than it is for me. If anyone's a jackass it's me."

"No, you're not," he murmured, hugging her tight.

Kala turned to Tim and grinned. "So he's seen sense _and_ made up with his girlfriend? I think I deserve a high-five for that, don't you?"

Tim just rolled his eyes and slapped her five. Kal-El took advantage of the moment to send a coded text to Oracle, who would pass on the information for him. Also that way he didn't have to see Cassie kiss his son, who blushed scarlet at the fact that she'd done so in front of his _dad_.

"Just do me a favor," Kala said, ignoring the pair. "When you do take Jason to see Zatanna, can I come along?"

"Why?" Kal-El asked her. Kala had made it very plain that she was staying out of the hero game.

"I wanna ask where she gets those fishnets," Kala said, and Jason broke away from Cassie to groan at her. Kal-El couldn't help laughing; trust Kala to find a way to lighten the moment.

"All right, let's go," Jason finally said, rumpling his sister's hair to her annoyance. "Cassie, Tim, I'll see you around soon. I promise."

Of course, given the choice, Jason flew with his father, Kala doing lazy loops around them. "I thought you might be mad at me for being careless," Jason said abashedly on the way back.

"If I did that, I'd be a hypocrite," Kal-El admitted. "Don't worry, son. We'll get this figured out. And I'll even tell Mom for you."

"Yeah, I was dreading that." Jason chuckled.

Kal-El smiled. Lois would _not_ be pleased that her son had gotten hurt—she was famously protective of both twins—and the culprit might need protective custody. "I left her in the middle of an investigation, so her attention ought to be fairly caught up with that. As a matter of fact…."

He slowed in midair, listening to Lois' heartbeat, which was slightly elevated. And also not where she'd been the last time he spoke to her. He really hoped she hadn't done something drastic without him there to talk sense to her. Kal-El frowned, tuning his hearing in that direction, and then heard his wife whisper, "_Gotcha._"


	23. A Day in the Life of a Legacy

**Totally proud of Anissa this week, as we managed to get this guy closed out about four hours earlier this week than we usually do. And trust me, it makes a difference! Here's hoping this guy is worth the wait. Enjoy!**

* * *

><p>Kal-El dropped Jason off and hustled back to Lois. <em>Something<em> was certainly going on; turning his hearing in that direction revealed angry voices and Lois doing her best to simper meekly. He was unsurprised to locate her in the bank they'd been investigating, and his x-ray vision showed two security guards shouting at her.

Instead of arguing, though, Lois was cringing apologetically—not her style at all. The behavior and the glasses she was wearing told Kal-El she was using her alias, Sadie Blodgett, who was not at all a Pulitzer-prize winning reporter for the _Daily Planet_.

If Superman came bursting in to her rescue, though, her cover would be blown. So he hovered, fuming. Right now Lois had the situation under control, but if it looked dangerous, then he'd do whatever he had to.

The guards dumped her purse out, finding some documents, and that occasioned still more yelling and threats of having her arrested for breaking and entering. In his present mood, Kal-El considered just letting that happen. Lois would be safe, and she might even rethink her methods at last.

To his amazement, she managed to talk her way out of it, pointing out that they had the documents she'd tried to take, and their superiors would be furious upon finding out an intruder had gotten this far in. The two men went silent at that, and then manhandled Lois out of the office they'd caught her in, into the elevator, and out the door unceremoniously, warning her all the way of the consequences of another attempt.

Her glasses flew off when they shoved her, and Lois staggered, cursing under her breath as she grabbed up the disguise and her rifled-through purse. Kal-El landed the moment she was out of sight. "Back to square one?" he asked, keeping his voice neutral.

Lois grinned at him, that old devil-may-care smile that preceded some of her craziest—and most successful—stunts. Such as shooting him to make him admit his identity. "Not hardly. Fly me out of here, I've got a story to write."

"But … you didn't get the documents," Kal-El replied, confused. Some things were automatic, though, and he caught Lois around the waist to take off.

She laughed wickedly. "Those? Random handful of memos I grabbed when I realized I was about to get busted. The _real_ info is all right here." With that, Lois reached down the front of her shirt, retrieving a flash drive she'd evidently dropped into the most convenient hiding spot.

Somehow, he wasn't surprised. "You hacked someone's computer?"

Lois snickered. "Worse. I didn't have to. The VP keeps his password written on a sticky note on the underside of his desk. Kal-El, the whole bank is a front. They're laundering money for the crime syndicate at incredible amounts. And you know what the best part is?"

Her hazel eyes gleamed with triumph, and Kal-El found himself swept up with her. "What's that?"

"I've got digital copies of emails between the VP, Suen, _and Joeung_. We've got the sonofabitch. He's not weaseling out of _this_ one." Lois gave a full-throated, wild laugh of triumph, and Kal-El's heart skipped a beat. Oh yes, despite the fact that she drove him crazy with the risks she took, _this_ was why he'd married her.

"I love you," he said, and kissed her impulsively.

"I love you too. I'm not sharing the byline, though."

Kal-El stared in disbelief. "_What_? Lois, we _collaborated_ on this story!"

"But _I_ got the goods." She grinned at him, and he couldn't quite tell if she was serious or giving him hell.

He brought his flight to a complete halt. "And just who was hanging out overhead in case you got into more trouble than you could talk your way out of? Worrying myself sick, just so you know. These people are dangerous."

Lois sighed. "The banker's people aren't into heavy intimidation. Those security guards are way too complacent; it's all white-collar there. The dirty business goes along with the massage parlors and the gambling."

"Massage parlors?" Kal-El asked, not liking the sound of that.

"Oh yeah. Girls all over China and Southeast Asia promised jobs here, and it's not 'til they're already in the country illegally that they find out what those jobs _are_. I've got deposit records from four _big_ massage parlors doing way more cash flow than just soothing tired muscles. And with 'hiring bonuses' that pay to … wanna guess?"

"Not Lei. Not the ambassador's _brother_. He couldn't be _that_ stupid, could he?"

"Of course not. To Joeung. But he's in deep with Lei, who has a ton of money tied up in the bank. We can at least get the three of them with this." Lois' eyes blazed, and Kal-El remembered that Richard liked to compare her to a falcon. 'Sight, swoop, strike,' that was how he'd described the particular bird's hunting style, a bundle of predatory intent wrapped in feathers.

_His_ news-hawk might be wrapped in a suit by L. Lang, but Kal-El understood the comparison and appreciated it. "Let's get back to the _Planet_ then," he said, smiling.

Lois' gaze was distracted, already planning out the first paragraphs of her story. "And I've got to drop by Maggie's after all this is written up and hand her the data. She'll be on those guys before the issue hits the stands, so they won't have any warning."

"Teamwork," Kal-El said.

That got Lois' full attention. "Speaking of which, what kind of teamwork kept you busy? Just so I can look knowing when I see it in my own damn paper."

"Oh, that…" He _had_ volunteered to tell Lois about the situation with Jason losing his powers, and finding her in the custody of security had distracted him.

Might as well just go ahead and tell her plainly. Lois was _not_ going to be happy, but at least her baby boy wasn't actually hurt. "It wasn't League business this time. There was a problem with the Titans…."

Kal-El flew high enough over the city that no one heard Lois' outraged intention of kicking the crap out of the sorcerer who'd de-powered her son.

…

Zatanna got back to them within the day, giving a time and place for Jason and his father to meet her. As it turned out, Kala was working that night and no one could cover her shift, so couldn't be there to lend moral support to her brother. Jason found himself both disappointed and a tiny bit relieved; he'd worried that Kala actually _would_ ask about the fishnets.

He was nervous, though, and showing it, getting sympathetic looks from Dad. Even more so when they landed on a two-lane road outside Gotham, far enough from the city lights that both of them could clearly hear an owl calling out in the woods somewhere. "Are you sure this is the spot, Dad?"

Kal-El checked his phone's GPS function. "These are the coordinates she sent me. Just give it a minute, Jason. We're early."

The younger man fidgeted nervously. Exactly on time, they both heard a whispery noise, like a faint breeze, and suddenly Zatanna was standing a little distance away. "You could have just called, you know," she told Kal-El remonstratively.

"I don't have your direct number," he replied with a shrug.

She chuckled at that. "I'm sure Oracle would give it to you. You are _Superman_, you know."

He shook his head. "And that would be abusing my position as well as presuming on you. No, I'll go through channels like everyone else. That way it's fair."

Zatanna shrugged. "This is why they call you the Big Blue Boy Scout, you know."

He just grinned. "I happen to like that nickname. It sure beats some others I've heard. Anyway, I don't think you've met my son, Jason."

"No, but everyone knows Superboy." Zatanna held out a white-gloved hand, and Jason shook with her.

He wasn't terribly enthused about all this, considering his recent experience of magic, and hoped she couldn't tell. "Pleased to meet you," Jason said politely.

"But not under these circumstances, I imagine," Zatanna replied, with a winning smile. "Well, gentlemen, all I have left to say is … welcome to Shadowcrest."

With that she stepped back and swept her arm out in a grand gesture, as the empty field behind her disappeared to be replaced by an imposing Gothic mansion. Jason startled a bit at that, clearly confused. "That was _not_ there a second ago!"

"Technically it's not there _now_," Zatanna informed him. At his puzzled expression, she continued, "Unless you want to spend the next year learning magical theory, I can't give you an explanation that's not going to sound either impossible or like gibberish."

Kal-El just smiled. "In my experience it's best not to worry about how or why, and just trust the expert."

Just then, Jason's phone chirruped, and he grimaced as he checked the text message he'd just been sent. He couldn't help groaning. "It's Kala," he said by way of explanation, but did _not_ forward her request to Zatanna to turn him into a giant iguana. Just once. Quickly, he texted back, _You're insane. ILU anyway lil sister._

This must have been her idea of providing moral support, because the reply came back before he even put the phone away. _ILU2. Don't forget to ask about the fishnets for me._ Jason just scoffed and left that unanswered, shaking his head—but finally smiling.

With that taken care of, they proceeded up the path to the front doors, which opened just before they arrived. Jason was reassured to see two servants in black tie just behind them, glad that magic wasn't so casual as to merely open doors.

At least until he realized neither of the servants had heartbeats. "Um…" he trailed off, staring as the two men closed the doors in perfect, inhuman unison.

"They're not exactly real," Zatanna explained. "Just magical constructs. I'm the only one living here at present."

Jason shivered. "But _why_?" he couldn't help asking, even though Dad darted him a glance as if to warn against questioning people in their own homes.

Zatanna only shrugged. "Makes the place a little less lonely. And a little less creepy for visitors, at least the ones who can't tell they're constructs."

"Sorry," Jason said, abashed. "I'm a little freaked out by magic right now."

"Understandably," she replied with a smile. "Look, now that we're inside the estate's wards, let me try the easy way, okay?"

Not sure what the easy way was, but wanting to get this over with, Jason nodded. "All right. Go ahead."

He expected more dramatics, perhaps a crackle of thunder or flashes of light. But Zatanna only looked at him intently and said, "_Erotser srewop_." It took him a moment to work out that she'd said '_restore powers_'.

Wild hope rose; nothing _felt_ different, but that didn't mean anything. Not yet. He needed to test it. He stared down at the checkerboard-pattern tiles, focusing his gaze and seeing … nothing but tiles. All right, x-ray vision didn't work, but Jason couldn't give up just yet. He reached for the earliest of his powers to appear, hoping it would be the first to return.

The foyer opened out into a long hallway, and Jason turned to attempt a leap. Nothing like his usual jumps that rose thousands of feet in the air, just a little hop of thirty feet or so. Something easy for him but humanly impossible, from a standing start at least.

He landed about six feet away, not stumbling that time because he'd halfway expected it. "No such luck?" Zatanna asked. Jason shook his head, not trusting himself to speak. The magician shrugged. "I really didn't think it'd be that simple. Raven sent those gauntlets on to me; the spell that's on them shouldn't have been capable of what it actually did."

"What does that mean?" Kal-El said, a worry line creasing his brow.

"It means there's some other factor involved. The man you were fighting isn't a terribly experienced sorcerer, so maybe he has a wild talent that cropped up just in time to save him. Or maybe something _else_ was going on." Zatanna shrugged, meeting both sets of worried blue eyes.

"But you can reverse it, right?" Jason asked.

"We'll figure it out. It might just take some time. First I need to find out exactly what happened to cause this, and then I can unravel it. Have a little faith, Superboy. I _am_ pretty much top of my field." As if to prove it, Zatanna tapped the brim of her top hat, and a brief burst of sparks rose from it.

"Don't tell me magic really sparkles when you use it," Jason said, deadpan.

That won him a laugh. "No, but flash powder does. I'm actually at the top of _both_ my fields, stage magic and the real thing. Anyway, since you're both here and we have the time, there's a few more things I want to try while I can compare how you react to magic to how your dad does. Follow me to the workroom, gents." With that she made a showy turn on her heels and lead them down a side corridor.

Jason just looked up at his father mournfully. "So we're both going to be guinea pigs?"

"No, if you get on my nerves I'll turn you into a rabbit and put you in the stage show popping out of a hat," Zatanna said.

"I was told you have to have a sense of humor to work with magic," Kal-El explained when Jason just rolled his eyes at the joke.

"Which is why Batman has the magical aptitude of a brick," Zatanna shot back.

"I've seen him laugh," Jason put in.

"Really?" Zatanna turned around and walked backwards. "Who was bleeding at the time?"

"I … well … uh…" Jason fumbled for an instance of Bruce smiling that hadn't been at a criminal's comeuppance, or personally embarrassing.

"Still angry with him?" Kal-El asked gently.

"It does get irritated to have someone so consistently disbelieve in what you do. Even when you prove it right in front of him, even when you use it on him. He just doesn't believe in anything he can't decipher." Zatanna took a deep breath. "Yes, it is _possible_ to make someone hallucinate a lot of the things I can do, but at some point you really do just have to give in and believe the evidence."

"Giving in is the one thing he never does," Kal-El said, and even Jason had to nod. He'd seen that the summer he spent in Gotham, and ever since. Iron—no, _titanium_ resolve was a Bat-trait that Tim was cultivating, too.

Zatanna shrugged. "I know he's your friend, and we have business to take care of, anyway." And with that, they reached her magical workroom, where a number of books were sitting on a table, slips of paper stuck between the pages at places Zatanna wanted to reference quickly.

Jason took a deep breath. He still wasn't comfortable with being experimented on, with or without his father there. But if this was the only way to regain his powers…

…Bats weren't the only ones with stubborn determination. That was a Lane trait, too.

…

Kala texted Dustin and Sebast, telling them she was working late. The lie grated on her, but she had little choice. It wasn't as if she could tell either of them she was flying to Baltimore without even buying a plane ticket.

She'd gotten Jason's message a little while earlier saying he was back from the meeting with Zatanna. _Ha ha. No luck yet, going back later._ Kala could feel the misery behind her twin's short message, and simply had to see him for herself.

Campus security wasn't prepared to deal with anything as fast as she was, so she knocked on his door just a few minutes after leaving work. "It's open," Jason called out from inside the room.

"Were you expecting someone?" Kala replied, walking in.

"Nope." Jase was lying on his bed, looking morose, with Gazeera sprawling on his chest. The lizard's tail dangled off the side of the bed; from nose to tail-tip, he was nearly as long as Jason was tall. In his old age, some of the iguana's spikes had gotten bent or broken, and his skin was a duller olive than the bright green of his youth, but his burly jaw and throat-wattles were as magnificent as ever.

"Well, hello there, handsome," Kala said, and tipped her head back, jerking her chin up repeatedly. Gazeera, dozing under Jason's petting, woke up and turned toward her, returning the gesture.

"You know that's how territorial males compete for females," Jason informed her for at least the hundredth time. She was having some success at least; his tone had lightened and a hint of a smile played around his mouth.

Kala sat down beside her brother, petting Gazeera's head with one hand, and patting Jason's shoulder with the other. "Yeah, but he never read the book. It just how I greet my favorite lizards."

When he looked up at her, Kala made the same gesture at him, and Jason finally laughed. "You're nuts."

"I'm not the one who _wanted_ be Godzilla when I grew up," she pointed out.

"No, you wanted to be Mothra. But you settled for rock star." Jason grinned a little at that.

Kala smirked. "It was a letdown, you know, but I had to take fame and fortune over becoming a giant telepathic moth of possibly divine origin. Since I can't read your mind, though, tell me the whole story."

Jason sighed heavily. "Basically, this was just the diagnostic visit. Zatanna thinks she has an idea what happened, but it's going to be a pain to figure out how to reverse it. The actual problem seems to be that my body is convinced that the lack of powers is normal now, so that's why I'm not recharging. She's gonna take apart the gauntlets the guy was wearing and see if there are any other enchantments on them, because that shouldn't have happened. But apparently magic breaks its own rules whenever it wants."

"Magic's a rebel," Kala opined.

"Not the good kind, either," Jason replied morosely. "Kal, I don't know what I'm gonna do. What if I never get my powers back?"

"Oh, we're gonna get them back, no matter what has to be done," she responded instantly.

"Yeah, but … if I have to drop out of the uniform, that means you could drop in." Jason looked at her steadily when he said it, knowing his twin better than anyone else knew her.

And yes, there was a part of her that _ached_ at not being able to wear the family crest. A part of her that bled at being called the Blur, at being thought of as just his accessory, a part that just knew she could _rock_ a crimson cape trailing behind her.

The larger part of Kala's soul said, _No_. She shook her head slowly. "I'm not ready for it, Jase. I don't think I ever will be. It's all right to pitch in and save your bacon now and then, but…. I'd step in if I had to. And not for very long, either."

Her brother paused, still petting the sleepy iguana. "No matter what you think, Kal, General Zod didn't screw you up for all time. You're not anywhere near as broken as you think you are."

She had to laugh. "No, Jase, you're right. Dru-Zod didn't break me. The cracks were always there; he just showed me where the faults lay."

At that, Jason sat up, his eyes stormy, dumping a lapful of startled lizard onto her. He grabbed her shoulders and tugged her close, staring into her eyes. "_You are not a fuck-up, Kal._ You're my _sister_. I know you. You can be a great big cheese toast sometimes, but you're not messed up like that. You're just as much a Super as I am."

Kala looked at him with love and sorrow in her eyes; his belief in her always got her choked up. "I love you, Jase. But I know who I am, all the Empress of Earth jokes aside. I won't take the risk of cracking under pressure."

Jason growled and shook her with a mixture of exasperation and affection. "I'm gonna crack your head if you don't stop thinking you're some kind of colossal loser, Kal. Quit talking smack about my twin, you hear?"

She started laughing at last, and that was the moment two things happened simultaneously. Gazeera had had enough being tumbled about, and clambered away from both of them. And one of Jason's roommates opened the door, standing stock-still and staring at the spectacle of Jason Kent—who carried a picture of a blonde named Cassie in his wallet—nose to nose with a dark-haired girl. "Um … sorry, you shoulda put a sock on the doorknob or something," the guy said.

"_What_?! Gross! She's my _sister_ you freak!" Jason yelped, and Kala cackled.

Gazeera saw the door standing open, and made a break for freedom, scuttling off the bed and towards the unfortunate roommate. "_Shut the door!_" Kala and Jason yelled.

The guy saw a six-foot-long lizard with heavy jaws and long claws coming at him at high speed, and jumped out of the way. The twins both tried to jump off the bed at once and tripped over each other. Kala managed to get her feet under her first and caught Gazeera just at the doorway, scooping him up in both hands and tucking his tail under her arm. "Uh-unh, no sir, we are _not_ having Gazeera versus the Johns-Hopkins student body tonight," she scolded, rubbing his chin until he stopped flailing.

"Kal, you freakin' stepped on me," Jason protested.

"Dude, I told you to keep that thing in its cage!" the roommate complained.

"Don't be such a chicken," Kala said, glaring.

"Hey, I didn't know I was gonna room with a guy who kept a damn dinosaur by his bed," the guy shot back.

Kala lifted Gazeera up and kissed his head. "And he's a precious dinosaur, yes he is. Seriously, man, this iguana is fourteen years old. Have some respect."

By then Jason had gotten up and dusted himself off. "By the way, Kala, this is Howard. Howard, this is my twin sister, Kala."

Still eyeballing the iguana, Howard said, "Yeah, now I believe she's your sister. She's just as weird as you."

"_Excuse you?!_" Kala snapped, whirling on him. Gazeera hissed with the sudden movement. "I'll have you know I am much, _much_ weirder than Jase."

Jason just dropped his head into his hands with a long-suffering sigh, and Kala laughed. On that note Howard picked up the book he'd come looking for and left. "Well, that was fun," Kala remarked, sitting back down with a firm hold on the struggling lizard.

Her brother plopped down beside her. "Yeah, sure. Fun like a roller coaster right after dinner. Seriously, though, what are we gonna _do_?"

She shrugged, thinking. "Well … you were the one who wanted a normal life. Maybe now's the time to take a shot at it."

He gnawed the inside of his lip, an old habit whenever he was thoughtful and worried at the same time. "Maybe. You know, spring break's coming up. And Grandpa Ben invited me out to the farmhouse any time I have time. It wouldn't be a bad idea to take a week and just chill."

Kala nodded. The paperwork had been finalized shortly after Martha's passing. The Kent family home in Smallville was held in a living trust for Jason and Kala jointly, with Ben Hubbard guaranteed residence there as long as he lived. "I miss Smallville, and I know Dustin does, too. Maybe I can carve out a couple days and come join you."

Jason looped an arm around her shoulders and hugged her. "I'd like that, Kal."

"Consider it done, brother mine," she said, and his quiet smile was worth more than the cheers of a thousand fans.

…

Each day for the heir to both Wayne and al Ghul was full—and fully scheduled. Damian had little experience of other children, however, and could not have known how different his life was from theirs. The physical training alone would've drawn complaints from many adults, and that wasn't all of it. Ra's al Ghul would not allow an heir of his bloodline to let the mind atrophy while honing the body to perfection, so Damian was already several years ahead of the normal learning curve for his age.

Mornings were for physical training, mostly. Martial arts to develop his muscles and endurance, and weapons practice as well to familiarize him with the tools of his trade. He ran, biked, swum, practiced katas, did strength training, and of course sparred with his tutors, on a schedule that alternated activities based on the day.

Lunch was his largest meal, and his mother's chefs ensured that he got all of the nutrition he needed. Damian probably had twice the caloric intake of an ordinary child, but he was lean, without barely a trace of 'baby fat' except in the roundness of his cheeks. He had never tasted refined sugar and had no conception of junk food. He did have a young boy's craving for sweets; one chef in particular indulged him with desserts sweetened with honey, or iced fruit juices.

Fortified by lunch, his studies resumed. Mathematics, history, philosophy, chemistry, biology, physics, and languages occupied his afternoons, with a rest break in the middle of it all. As the only student, Damian had his instructors' undivided attention. Most of his learning was hands-on and interactive, though he was also expected to complete assignments such as translations in his free time. That free time came only one day a week and in the evenings, unless a teacher was indisposed.

If he had done well during the day, Damian might be invited to dine with his grandfather and mother. He looked upon that as a special privilege, as he was meant to. No child of his bloodline would sit down to dinner with _servants_, so if he were not allowed at the family table he had to eat alone. Breakfast and lunch by himself weren't so bad, giving him time to catch up on his reading for his studies, but he preferred the exalted company of the formal table.

He was nearly always out of his depth in the majority of the discussions over dinner, but both of them made a point of including him by asking about his day. His grandfather paid close attention, but his mother listened with more concern. They both _knew_, of course. Damian was not so naïve even at his tender age as to think his teachers didn't report to those who paid them. Ra's al Ghul was rarely impressed by his progress, but the days when he was not dismissive were victories for Damian.

Talia, however, was another matter entirely. In some ways she was the strictest individual in Damian's life; if she suspected he was not performing to the best of his capability, one sharp look from her withered him more than all the exhortations of his tutors. Sometimes when he _thought_ he was doing his best, that look and the warning arch of her brow would lead him to discover another notch of strength or brilliance. Damian dreaded disappointing her, and lived for her praise. He was not being raised with any particular direction on the matter of religion, Ra's al Ghul preferring to manipulate doctrine rather than subscribe to it, so for all practical purposes he worshipped his mother.

The late evenings were his favorite times. Dinner over, assignments complete, perhaps a little recreation aside, he was always thoroughly tired. But he delayed going to bed as long as he could, taking the time to bathe and brush his teeth and perhaps even neaten up his room. All so that he would still be awake when his mother came in to wish him goodnight.

Perhaps she'd caught on, because Talia arrived as early as she could, prolonging the moments she could spend with her son in quiet reflection. They talked about his day—not the more formal and dutiful progress reports over dinner, but a leisurely conversation that allowed him to ramble about the things that interested him, and her to enlighten him further with examples from her own knowledge and experience. Damian believed his mother knew _everything_.

Sometimes there were stories. Damian remembered, when he was little and couldn't yet handle the full regimen of mental and physical training, she told him tales to help him drift off to sleep or to occupy his restless mind. Talia told the _best_ stories; even the boring bits of history came alive when she spoke them.

So it was no surprise when, after the last delaying tactic was defeated and Damian was in bed, he looked up at her and asked, "_Ommi_, tell me a story?" They practiced his languages even now, speaking English tonight, but he always called her by her title in Arabic. It was the first language for both of them and the most personal, no matter how many others they knew.

"What kind of story, _habibi_?" The endearment was only between them; in front of others she called him by his name.

"Tell me about Alexander," Damian said, his eyes bright. He loved hearing of the ancient Greek king. It was fortunate for him that Ra's al Ghul owned only well-trained horses, for if there had been a fractious black stallion in his stable, Damian might have tried to tame his own Bucephalus.

"I told you how Alexander conquered the Persians last night," Talia chided.

He did not pout; it had never won him his way. Talia was implacable. "Then you choose," Damian said. He almost hoped for one of the old stories, more than half mythical, of Arabian princes and thieves in disguise and treacherous _djinn_. But those fairytales seemed to belong more to his early childhood, with his mother preferring _real_ stories now.

Talia smoothed his blanket thoughtfully, and then smiled. Damian loved that smile; he would do anything to earn it. "I will tell you of another man called 'the Great', then. A prince who was a warrior, a diplomat, a leader, and an architect. He reigned longer than any of his people before or since and is regarded as the greatest of all his kind. The monuments he raised are still regarded with awe to this day. Can you guess his name, _habibi_?"

There were a couple of possibilities, and trying to figure out which she meant was part of the fun. "Was his kingdom cold most of the year?" Damian asked, thinking perhaps Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia.

"Quite the opposite," she replied.

A tropical part of the world, then. "Ramesses II?" Damian guessed.

Talia ruffled his hair. "My wise little one," she murmured, obviously quite pleased, and Damian preened under the praise. As his mother told him of the life of the pharaoh, he began to doze, his mind drifting to a land ruled by the desert wind and the annual flooding of the Nile. Damian felt the unrelenting Egyptian sun on his skin, heard the rattle of palm leaves in the breeze, saw in his mind's eye the great statues and obelisks. He rode in the pharaoh's chariot to battle, re-conquering lands that had belonged to Egypt of old and adding new territories. Though he warred against the Hittites, Ramesses had eventually made peace with them, taking the Hittite king's eldest daughter as one of his wives.

It was as fantastic a tale as any fairy-story, even better for being true. Damian's eyelids drooped as Talia wound down the tale. "In the end, Ramesses the Great lived into his nineties, having ruled the greatest kingdom of that age for more than sixty years, and leaving a legacy of wealth and architecture behind him. In his life he had two hundred wives, a hundred sons, and sixty daughters, and upon his death at that extraordinary age, his thirteenth son Merneptah—himself already in his fifth decade—succeeded him. Many pharaohs took his name in an attempt to recall his glory, but none came close to accomplishing that goal."

"I want to go to the temples of Abu Simbel," Damian murmured, more than half asleep.

"They are very beautiful," Talia told him, and then added musingly, "Perhaps I shall take you with me to see them."

That woke Damian up again, his eyes as bright as any child told they were going to an amusement park. For him, the attraction was as much time with his mother as it was seeing the legendary temples. Still, he knew to behave with decorum no matter how exciting the prospect was. "I would like that very much."

"We shall see. Sleep now, my little prince," Talia murmured, and kissed him good night.


	24. One Forward, Two Back

Perry knew trouble was brewing when Lane was at work before him, sitting in the chair across from his desk and grinning like the cat that got the cream—plus a couple mice or maybe even a great big rat. "If you're for a raise, come back when you've actually done some work," he barked.

"Good morning to you, too, Chief," Lois said, laughing. "I don't need a raise. But I did set up your front page for you." She held up the mock-up, with the story he'd sent her and Clark after above the fold.

Perry just grunted, taking it from her and sitting down at his desk. Lois had always had the gift of being able to write a good hook; the first few lines of any of her articles tended to insure that people read the whole thing. And this one was a wild ride indeed. "A collapsed bank, human trafficking, gambling, racketeering, money laundering … _hmph_. Sure you couldn't have worked in a riot or something?"

"Well, there _were_ some confiscated bits of endangered wildlife, the kind used in traditional Asian medicine. But I didn't think you'd let me write 'tiger penis soup' on the front page." Lois was actually _beaming_, proud of herself and her ability to raise Perry's eyebrows.

"And where's your coauthor?" Perry asked.

Lois' hazel eyes rolled extravagantly. "Are you kidding me? It's _my_ story. Clark's sources filled in some details, but I was the one who broke into the bank."

Oh, that statement brought flashbacks. Perry kicked back in his chair and just studied his protégé for a moment. Lois had been wild-eyed and fearless as a young woman, and some things apparently never changed. He remembered the day she'd fallen from a helicopter, been saved by Superman in his first public appearance, and then gone ahead and interviewed the President. That said it all about her, really.

Perry had only been able to persuade Lois into administration because of the twins. When they were little, they'd needed their mom home on a regular schedule, but now that both kids were more or less out of the house, Lois had been fretting over the restrictions. And he knew it. Half the reason why Perry had demoted Lois was to let her work out some of her stress.

And the _whole_ reason he'd sent Kent with her was because her husband had at least a snowball's chance in hell of reining her in from the craziest stunts. Perry wouldn't have been at all surprised to learn that Lois had waited for Clark to be distracted so she could break into the bank.

"Surprised Inspector Sawyer didn't haul you in for that," was all he said.

Lois grinned. "There was no _official_ report of a break-in, and the info I gave her was solid. Mags married a reporter, she knows when to turn a blind eye."

"Yeah, but her reporter took a promotion and stayed there," Perry shot back. He was baiting her, and they both knew it. Tobie Raines at the helm of the _Daily Star_ was no threat to Lois, but implying that her choice was better than Lois' would set his star reporter off. They needed to just go ahead and have this out, once and for all.

The steely-eyed—and steely-haired, these days—reporter glared at him. "Knock it off. You _know_ I'm not cut out for the desk work. You damn sure didn't train me to file paperwork and host meetings."

Perry stifled a grin. "I didn't train you to listen to me, either, and I kinda regret that now. You taught yourself, Lane, I just let you do it."

"Bullshit," Lois scoffed, waving a hand dismissively. "I had the brain and the guts, but _you_ taught me how to use them."

He really couldn't argue that. Not when he'd heard her giving _his_ advice to every wet-behind-the-ears wannabe in the City room, or when he knew his own six 'golden rules' had been expanded into 'Lois Lane's Ten Rules of Reporting'. And even Perry had to admit that Lois' phrasing was catchier.

When he didn't immediately rebuff her, Lois went in for the kill. "Tell you what, Chief. Let me be a _reporter_ when I need to, and I'll be an assistant editor when you need me to. Sound good? You're happy, I'm not driving everyone crazy, the paper gets its star reporter back now and then. Great plan."

Perry snorted amusement. What she'd just suggested was exactly the compromise he'd hoped to make, but it wouldn't do to give Lois her way too easily. Besides, she thrived on conflict. "What makes you think you can have both, Lane?"

"Seems I remember a certain Editor-in-Chief running down a story or two of his own. Doesn't matter if you call them editorials, I know a story when one's waved under my nose. And if I do it that way, it'll have the same outcome as when you did—keeps the bullpen from getting too complacent, knowing the boss could snipe them off the front page." Lois crossed her arms triumphantly and glared at him.

He scowled truculently at her, only because he wanted to beam and hug her. Great Caesar's ghost, Lois was so much like him Perry could almost forget she wasn't his daughter. They were related by newsprint ink and terrible coffee instead of blood, but he saw so much of himself in her that it almost hurt.

And that was a good thing, because Perry had plans for this paper. His son, Bryan, was thirteen now, and already showing certain reporterly traits. He was curious, always into everything, and smarter than his old man, that was for sure. Perry often found himself stunned by the glimpses of the young man Bryan would become. The _Planet_ had to hold together for him, and Lois could certainly do that.

Not that Bryan would automatically inherit a place on the staff. Perry intended to start Bryan out at the bottom of the heap just like Lois had. Mailroom, janitorial, or cafeteria, that was how the best reporters started. It made them hungry for the stories, and they never got entitled like that jackass Galloway that Lois had replaced.

After a suitable time had passed, Perry gave a dramatic sigh. "Fine, Lane. You win. _But_ you start hiding from meetings again, I'll bust your ass down to beat reporter again and give Kent your job."

Her eyes went wide, her nostrils flared, and Perry was certain Lois was about to erupt in profanity. Instead, she started laughing, and it was a full five minutes before he could make out what she was saying.

"He'd never—_ha!_—Clark'd _quit_ before he'd have me working for him!" And then she dissolved into snickering again.

Perry just folded his arms and stared at her, fighting his own laughter. "Well, he did have to work for you once. Might do you both good to turn the tables."

Lois shook her head, her eyes bright. "Never happen, Chief. _Never. Happen_."

…

Spring break in Smallville was actually a really good idea, Jason decided on the long ride from the airport. It was bitterly ironic how Ben knew the secret now, and he _still_ couldn't shorten the trip with a couple of super-jumps.

Enough of that. He'd promised himself he wouldn't mope and moan over what he'd lost. Zatanna was deep in research, and Dad was confident of her abilities. For the next week, Jason wasn't going to think about it if he could help it.

He took a deep breath of air sweetened by wildflowers; the fields and pastures alongside the road were dotted with bluebells, fawn lilies, spring beauties, and wild parsley. Jason smiled, remembering all the vacations to the Kent family farm during the summers, when Grandma had patiently identified every flower, leaf, rock, insect, or even lizard he'd happened to bring in—although she'd drawn the line at what would forever be known as "_get that gosh-darned bullsnake off my kitchen table __**right this instant**__ Jason Lane Kent!_"

Jason chuckled at the memory, and Ben looked over at him. "Whatcha thinkin', son?" the older man asked.

"That time I caught the bullsnake and brought it in the house to ask Grandma what it was," he replied.

Ben laughed, too. "Oh, I remember. Your grandmother was a good God-fearing woman, and I don't think she ever swore a day in her life, but when you pulled that snake out of your backpack and put it on the table, I think that's the closest she ever came to cursing a blue streak that'd put your mom to shame."

Both of them snickered at that. "I have really great memories out here," Jason finally said.

"I'm glad to hear it," Ben replied. "I think everyone needs a place like this. Someplace you can get some peace and quiet and time to reflect."

"That's exactly what I need this week." Jason sighed, then looked over at the older man. "Something strange happened to me a few days ago."

Ben chuckled. "Jason, from what I know, strange things happen to or around the Kent family on a regular basis. Wanna talk about it?"

And just like that, he found himself telling the story he was trying to forget about. Jason summarized as much as possible; Grandpa Ben knew about their secret identities, but he wasn't up-to-date on superhero business. At the end of the story, Jason concluded, "So now I'm, well, _human_. Just like anybody else."

Ben raised one index finger from its place wrapping around the steering wheel. "First thing. You were _always_ human, son. I know lots of people in this world who don't have a scrap of human compassion or decency or integrity. One or two of them right here in this town, I'm ashamed to say. And some folks are downright monsters. Anyone who can murder a _child_…." The old man shook his head. "Anyway, point is, you and your sister are half-human according to science, and _all_ human where it matters: in the heart. Don't forget that."

Jason nodded. Ben popped the next finger on that same hand up. "Second thing. You are not just like anybody else. There's only one of you. No one else on Earth knows everything you've learned, or has seen everything you've experienced, or understands everything you've felt. Not even Kala, and she's your twin. So don't go thinking you're nobody just because you can't throw a tractor into Missouri from here."

He couldn't help smiling. "Thank you for putting it in perspective, Grandpa."

"You're welcome. That's what us old farts are good for. We've got so much perspective we just have to share."

"You're not an old fart," Jason protested.

"Sure I am. Even Martha knew that. No shame in it, though. Only shame in getting old is if you have too many regrets, and I don't. Just the one big one." Ben looked wistful then, as if his eyes saw everything except the road.

"What's that?" Jason asked, and then realized how horribly impertinent it was. "I mean … sorry, that's none of my business."

"'Course it is. Only thing I really regret is taking that job at the steel mill right out of high school. My dad worked in a machine-shop up to Kansas City, and the summer before he'd gotten distracted and lost three fingers off his right hand to the stamping press. He wanted me to go to college, y'see, be the first one in our family with more'n a high school diploma. Problem was, I was the only boy out of four and I saw how tight things were. My mom was taking in other people's washing and selling baked goods to make ends meet, and we had a road stand to sell eggs and vegetables and such, but we were _poor_. And I hated it. I didn't want to go off to college in my only set of good clothes and know my folks were counting every penny for my books. So I took the job, and with my first paycheck I went over to the general store and paid off our whole tab, plus bought a whole smoked ham an' all the fixings. The girls went crazy; little Eileen thought it was Christmas morning and cried 'cause she didn't get any presents." Ben smiled at the recollection, and it rolled decades off his face.

"Sounds almost worth it," Jason said quietly.

"Yeah, that first paycheck was. Martin Lang's father ran the store back then, and he'd give credit. He'd take farm produce in trade, too, and he always knew where to put his thumb on the scales if a family had kids. Heavy on the stuff they brought to trade, light on what he weighed out to 'em. Had a habit of dropping penny-candy into the bags by accident and sayin' it was too much fuss to dig out." Ben sighed. "Those are gone days, son. Both my boys went off to college, made their granddaddy real proud, but in the end they came back here to raise their families."

He shook himself slightly. "I'm wandering. Look, the thing about that steel mill job was, once I had it, it got easier and easier to convince myself not to try for anything else. I could've worked a year, saved up all my extra pay from overtime and such, and then gone to school and left enough to see the family through. But after a year I'd convinced myself I needed _another _year, and by the end of two years I'd got so used to having that savings that I borrowed from it all the time. I'd need a new shirt, or I'd still be hungry after my sack lunch and want something from the cafeteria, or I had a date and wanted to take her somewhere nice."

"By the time three years went by, I figured I'd forgotten most of what I knew in high school, and after four years I was married to Sally with a baby on the way, and _boy_ do kids eat up your savings! I should've jumped when I had the chance, and I still regret it—but I had a good life anyway. And by the time the steel mill closed down I'd already found myself another job, less dangerous but not paying so good, so I was lucky. We always kept the land, unlike some folks, and if you take care of the land, the land'll take care of you. So long as we could put in the time to garden and raise some chickens and rabbits and a goat or two, we always had food. I don't ever remember being _hungry_, and neither were my kids. We didn't have a television and we just got a computer for my granddaughter about five—no, maybe six or seven years ago. But it was a good life."

Jason could only sit there, thinking. In some ways it was like Ben was from a different world, and he realized just how much things had changed within his own lifetime. He remembered when cell phones weren't allowed in school; more recently, he'd seen middle school kids texting while they walked whenever he went along to pick Kristin up. Kids these days even complained because they didn't have the cool new phones. He and Kala had gotten indestructible flip-phones in high school and _liked_ them because they could text. They hadn't been replaced as long as they worked, not even when Kala stole Jason's phone and had it painted bright green with black stripes. He'd gotten her back by paying a visual arts major to paint her phone pink and white with lavender hearts. That had lasted only until Kala found a black marker.

"The world does change," Jason said slowly, and looked over at his grandfather as they stopped at an intersection. "But we need it all, you know. We're always gonna need people who know how to grow food and fix a bike and put together a quilt. Everything always comes back around. I mean, I know you've seen the homesteading movement…."

Ben laughed again. "Oh yeah. City kids wanting to come out to the country and live like their grandparents did. But they can't give up their lattes and their internet. Y'know, couple of 'em bought what used to be the Finch property, falling-down barn and all. They're raising some kind of fancy purebred sheep out there. Brought an expensive sheepdog with a pedigree full of champions to work 'em, too."

Considering that Ben raised working beagles and only showed them at hunting trials, Jason could imagine how that had worked out. "What happened?" he asked.

"Damn fool dog got lured off by a coyote. One of the lucky ones, though. Showed up in town a week later footsore and skinny, and next thing we know there's some coyotes with white spots around. Coy-dogs, really. Anyway, Ellzey's oldest daughter and her husband took pity on the poor kids, let 'em have one of their farm collies—on the condition they neuter the champion or send him back East. Don't want any of that fancy blood messing up their good collies. Damn fine dogs, those collies. They'll herd sheep, ducks, cattle, whatever you got; they'll kill off the rats and the possums and anything else that'll eat your crops or your feed; they'll watch your kids and holler up a storm if they wander off; and they'll keep out the coyotes and things that'll eat your stock. If I wasn't a beagler I'd have one."

That, from Ben, was high praise. "I dunno, I kinda favor the beagles myself," Jason admitted, thinking of Bagel and Dusty and Chewie.

"Yeah, they're good dogs too. Not too many hounds'll drive like a beagle and still be mellow enough to fall asleep in your lap at night. You need to come out here some autumn and hear 'em running through the woods. It's beautiful, whether you get a rabbit or a deer or just get to hear them singing while they run."

Jason grinned a little to himself. With two beagles in the relatively small apartment, it was less 'singing' than 'howling cacophony'. If the Whites came over with Dusty and Narcissa, the beagle-song would even get the poor Doberman to howl, though Jason thought it was more in protest than sympathy. Luckily everyone in the family had learned how to quiet them. A handful of treats tossed onto the floor bought instantaneous, blessed silence.

There was silence in the cab of the truck for several miles, Jason and Ben both comfortable in their thoughts. Finally Ben said, "I mean that about the land, you know. I want the Kent family farm to stay in your family. And I'm glad you're thinking about taking it on."

"It'll never be sold," Jason said stoutly. They'd discussed the farm situation after Martha's death. The way the deed was structured, Ben could live in the house for the rest of his life, but Clark was the technical owner. His life was in Metropolis, though, as much as he loved the family place. And Jason did love the farm, the contented peace that seemed to settle on it towards the end of each day.

Right now, it was just what he needed.

Jason didn't realize he'd said so aloud until Ben nodded. "Yeah, when times are hard, this is a good place to come back to. People always say you should go to the mountains or the desert or something to think, and maybe that's true. All the camping trips I took with your grandmother, sometimes it seemed like we could solve all the world's problems sitting beneath the Montana sky with a bellyful of trout that'd been swimming an hour ago. But there's value to coming home, too. It's got a perspective like nothing else. And this is home for your family. This is where your dad grew up."

He nodded. "That's part of why I wanted to come for spring break. Everyone else can have Cancun and the Keys and whatever else. I need to _think_. I need to figure out where my life is going, and what I'm gonna do if—well, if I never do get my powers back. And even if I do get them back somehow, I guess this is also my chance to find out what living like a regular human is really like. I've never _been_ one. When I was little I was so sick, and then once the powers really kicked in I've always been kind of … untouchable, I guess."

Ben gave a thoughtful sigh. "Well, son, I guess you can start by helping me out around the place. Even if you can't float forty feet off the ground to fix a roof joist in the barn, I bet you can make yourself handy. And sometimes it's good for a man to do something with his hands, something he can look at afterward and say, 'I built that' or 'I fixed that'. We all need something real to reflect on."

And that was the perfect summary of Smallville if ever one exists. Jason found himself looking forward to this week, even under the current situation. He could resist a grin, though. "I see. You agreed to let me come stay for spring break so you could have someone to fob the chores off on, huh, Grandpa?"

Ben laughed, and slapped his shoulder affectionately. "Smart boy!"

…

Sebast flung himself onto the sofa, staring mournfully at Kala. "You're going to leave me here alone with these smelly boys for a weekend?"

"You _like_ boys," Kala teased.

"Yeah, but not these boys. They're weird. And not always in the good way." He scowled, and when that didn't work, pouted.

Kala sat down in the narrow space beside him. "Oh, stop. It's four days. It'll give you bonding time with Ned and Robb and Morgan."

At that, Sebast grinned, waggling his eyebrows. "I wouldn't mind some bondage time with Morgan."

She smacked his arm, and he mock-winced. "I said _bonding_, not _bondage_, and Morgan's off-limits anyway."

"I know, I know, we don't chase the same man. But you're in a relationship," Sebast complained, rubbing his arm.

Kala leaned over him, practically laying across his chest. "Yeah, and Morgan's straight. You know you're just trolling."

Sebast rumpled her hair so it fell in her eyes. They were perfectly comfortable cuddling like this—but only because Dustin was still at work. If he'd been home, Sebast wouldn't be quite this snuggly and touchy with Kala. The concept of personal space between them had long since dissolved, and if he resented anything about her relationships, it was the way they interfered with his friendship with her. Some guys just could not understand how they could hug and kiss and lay all over each other, and it was just _comfortable_, not sexy. Sure, Kala was beautiful and only an idiot would fail to see that, but Sebast preferred hard muscle and strong jaw-lines to curves and softness. That was just life.

And Dustin was a good guy, the only one so far that Sebast had _liked_ with Kala, but displays of affection like this clearly made him uncomfortable. He wouldn't say anything, being a good Midwestern boy and knowing they were just friends. Still, Dustin didn't like it, and Sebast knew that. With anyone else he would've flaunted the closeness just to remind the boyfriend that he'd been a part of Kala's life longer, but one, he wasn't rude to Dustin like that, and two, in Dustin's case it wasn't true.

Sebast occasionally found himself thinking that he wished he could find a guy who understood him as well as Kala did. But then, it was nice to be a mystery, to be the handsome and sexy singer who got all the groupies. If he did find someone like that, he'd probably have to settle down, and Sebast wasn't quite done playing the field. Not when there was so much glorious field out there, just begging to be played.

Apparently he'd let himself get lost in thought, because Kala flicked his nose. "Earth to Sebast. Come in, Sebast."

"Cut it out!" he grumbled, swatting at her hand.

"You were _gone_, Chupi. Total space-cadet. What were you thinking about?" She tilted her head, honestly curious.

"All the hot men I get to bring here while you're away," Sebast teased, and Kala scrunched up her nose in distaste. He chose that moment to tickle her, and she jumped away laughing.

"You great big jerk! I hope you have to spend spring break all alone."

"_Mamita_, you wound me," Sebast said, with his most pleading look. "You know it won't be the same without you around to critique my choices. And besides, you might not have me around, but you'll be with Dustin and Jason."

"Poor Sebast," Kala sighed, and leaned down to kiss his nose. "I'll send you a postcard."

"They make post cards for Smallville?" he asked.

"No, but they do for Possum Trot," Kala laughed.

Sebast chuckled at that, and rubbed his nose against hers. "Have fun, _mi_ Kala. I'll miss you."

"I know. I'll miss you, too." Kala smiled indulgently at him. "I'll be back before you know it."

…

With the story turned in to Perry, Lois could get back to dealing with her home life. She'd already gone to see Jason, the very night she'd found out about him losing his powers, and chewed both him and Clark over for not notifying her the _instant_ it happened. But then, she'd been breaking into a bank at the time, so maybe they deserved some forgiveness.

Jason seemed to be handling it okay, all things considered. Lois remembered Kal-El without his powers, how completely horrified he'd been to take a punch and _feel_ it. Now Jason had the same shocked look around his eyes, and Lois hated to see it. Nothing in the world was so frustrating as not being able to do anything to fix it.

Lois was close to all three of her children, and all of them knew they were loved. The days of doubting that were long past. Kala was so much like her it hurt, Kristin was the sweetest little girl on Earth, but Jason always had a special place in Lois' heart. Her son, her only boy, the one who had been laid in her arms first and into whose eyes she'd been staring when her whole world changed. The bond formed then would never be broken; he was always Momma's boy. Seeing him in distress and not being able to fix it was driving her mad.

So it was no wonder that Lois was doing everything in her power to make sure Jason would be all right. Today that meant exploiting her status as the media liaison to the Justice League of America.

Her press pass was sufficient to admit her to the JLA's on-planet headquarters. And the word that she'd arrived must've traveled fast, because J'onn J'onzz met her in the lobby. "Lois. It is a pleasure."

"Always good to see you, too, J'onn," Lois said, shaking the Martian's hand. He was one of her favorite heroes—after Kal-El, of course. That might have been because of the friendship between the two aliens who could pass for human, though it was more of a challenge for J'onn.

More likely it was because J'onn was just a great guy. And Lois couldn't help liking someone whose favorite Christmas gift was a case of Oreo cookies.

"How can I help you today?" J'onn was asking her as they walked. Usually she found a conference room or an office for the conversations she had with League members, and now she let J'onn lead.

Lois sighed. "Well, you can tell me everything you know about Zatanna. From what I've heard she's an accomplished _stage_ magician, but I don't know much about her as a hero."

"Zatanna Zatarra prefers not to court the spotlight—not as a real magician, anyway," J'onn said. "Her cover is stage magic, and she is very good at sleight-of-hand and illusions. But she is also highly skilled with true magic. Your son is in good hands."

"So you heard," Lois said.

"I did. Anyone with the ability to remove powers is a concern to us all." On that note, J'onn turned a corner and held the door for Lois. This was one of several communications stations, and J'onn pulled out a rolling chair for Lois.

She sat down with a heavy sigh. "Kal-El told me no one's figured out how this guy even did it yet."

"Sadly, no. He did not absorb the powers into himself like the Parasite can. The man himself claims not to know what he did or how he accomplished it." J'onn shook his head. "I have seen into his mind, and he is not lying."

Lois huffed an annoyed sigh. "So my son got de-powered by _accident_? That's just... Ugh. Thank you for checking up on his story, though, J'onn."

The Martian shrugged. "I assure you, we're leaving no avenue unexplored. But you came to ask about Zatanna...?"

For once, Lois found herself tongue-tied. "What, exactly, is she _doing_, J'onn?"

"At the moment, studying the enchanted gauntlets Jason's opponent was wearing. And studying the man himself, to see if he has any latent abilities. He is currently in our custody." Lois sat forward, hope rising, and J'onn raised a warning hand. "You cannot interrogate him, Lois. No one could blame you for wanting to cause him harm, but we cannot allow that to happen. And I know your integrity, but I would not place such temptation before you."

She slumped backward with a scowl. "Dammit, J'onn."

"Lois, intimidation cannot get anything from him that magic and telepathy cannot uncover more easily." His tone was conciliatory, but Lois knew he'd be implacable.

"And you think that magic can help Jason," she finally said.

"Magic stole his powers. Magic should be able to restore them. And Zatanna is perhaps the most powerful magician on our side. Trust her. Trust _us_." J'onn reached out to place one hand over Lois'. When he added further reassurance, it was directly in her mind. _[All will be well, Lois.]_

If only she could make herself believe that.


	25. Imperceivable Shifts

The last few days in Smallville had been unaccountably good. Jason discovered he could actually get to like this life, the rhythm of the days predictable and strangely sweet. He didn't need super-strength to heft a bale of hay to his shoulder and take it to the mules, breaking it up into flakes for them. Speed was of no use in certain farm chores, either. To move quickly around the hens was to frighten them into a clucking, flapping welter of confusion, and the goat probably wouldn't have appreciated being milked any faster than human speed.

Sure, nailing a new board in place or twisting a corroded bit of pipe fitting loose would've benefited from a touch of his powers, but there was an odd sort of satisfaction in tackling those tasks with purely human muscle and determination. Jason even found that he liked the weariness at the end of the day. He was never exhausted, the farm wasn't _that_ much work or Ben couldn't have kept it alone for more than a day. It was just that his body was telling him he'd done a full day's work, both mental and physical, and could take a well-deserved rest.

Jason couldn't really remember that feeling in his daily life before. Maybe when he'd been involved in a really big save, that mingled tiredness and sense of accomplishment had been there. But it had always been a rare thing, and now it was normal. Funny how something so simple as being _tired_ could be so heartwarming.

This was peace, and the more he looked out over the farm, the more Jason knew that he wanted to be the one who kept it in Kent family hands. Not just an obligation, either. He _wanted_ this, even moments like right now, brushing out the mules' coarse coats and making dust fly up with each stroke of the currycomb. By the time he got done, he'd smell of mule and his clothes would be coated with fine dust and hair.

Still, the point was sound. This place had played a large part in how his father had grown up to be the Superman he was, and it deserved to be cherished for that, too. It had its challenges, the commute to the kind of career Jason wanted being a big one, but Smallville was a good place to live, a good place to raise a family. And someday he wanted one of those, too.

A little melancholy intruded on Jason's thoughts at that, and he tried to push it away. There was no point in wondering if he and Cassie had a future if his powers didn't come back. She would be horribly offended if she ever knew he'd questioned it. But the simple fact was, to be a hero without powers took years of training, and Jason was far behind the game. Plus he had years of habits formed from being bulletproof. One misstep in the field, one accidental reversion to the days when he'd been deployed as a living tank, and he could be killed. No, if he was powerless, Jason wasn't even going to try to rejoin the caped crowd. He'd find his heroism in other ways.

And he had the terrible feeling that if he dropped out of the Titans, that would become a wedge between himself and Cassie. The two of them and Tim were very well balanced. If it became just Cassie and Tim running the group, well, Jason worried he might feel like a third wheel whenever they were all together. The other two would want to talk caped business, and he'd be left out. Besides, he couldn't really see Cassie out here. Not long-term, anyway. But then he couldn't have seen _himself _out here long-term until this week's patient clarity.

Jason chuckled to himself. If Grandpa Ben could hear the thoughts running through his mind, the older man would scold him. "Don't borrow trouble" was one of Ben's pet phrases. It didn't mean that one should ignore potential consequences and pitfalls. Just that worrying about what might happen several "ifs" and "maybes" down the road was a waste of energy. It was far too early to fret over who he planned to raise kids with! He was still in college, he had only been without his powers for a week, and all the things that concerned him were still just probabilities on the horizon. Better to think of the here and now, and finish brushing Patsy before she put a hoof on the edge of his shoe to remind him she and Betty were owed apples after this.

Just then, his cell phone rang, and Patsy flicked an ear in annoyance. "Hold on, girl," he said, pulling the phone from his pocket. "Jason here."

"Well hello, handsome," Cassie said, as if she'd somehow known he was thinking of her.

It was a welcome surprise, the reality of her voice blowing all the megrims out of his mind. "Cassie! Hey, gorgeous, how're you?"

"I'm good. Wondering if my boyfriend has met any cute country girls while my back is turned." Cassie's laughter was as refreshing as the little spring-fed creek Jason had waded through this morning, carrying his shoes as he crossed it.

While most people tended to think he was the serious and responsible twin, Jason had a streak of mischief as deep as Kala's, if not as broad. He grinned and chuckled, "Well, as a matter of fact, I'm standing here with _two_ country girls."

"Is that so?" The disbelief in Cassie's voice was mingled with amusement. She _knew_ there had to be a joke in this somewhere, but she couldn't resist following along.

"Mm-hmm. A redhead and a brunette. They're both younger than me, too." That happened to be true. Back when Jason had first visited Smallville, Ben had had a pair of geldings named Jack and Bob. When Bob passed on, he'd gotten Patsy, and then a few years later when Jack passed away, Ben had gotten Betty.

'The girls' as Ben called them were now both in their late teens and showing no signs of slowing down. Betty's rich sorrel coat still shone brightly when Jason brushed her, and Patsy still had the black stockings, dorsal stripe, and shoulder cross from her bay dun coloring that made her look so classic. Neither of them were _old_ by any stretch, and Ben had just been telling Jason the other morning that Patsy was perfectly capable of chasing coyotes out of the pasture she shared with the goat.

Cassie sighed into the phone. "Right. Two country girls. Whose kids did you get roped into babysitting?"

"Not kids," Jason laughed. "Patsy here's old enough to vote. I should probably mention that they're both stark naked, too."

"_What?!_" Cassie yelped. "Jason Lane Kent, I swear…! All right, wise guy, what's the punchline?"

"Nothing. The three of us are just out here enjoying the spring sunshine. And I was brushing Patsy's hair for her. Here, you want a picture?" Still snickering, Jason pulled the phone from his ear and brought up its camera function. "C'mere, Patsy babe, gimme a kiss," he said for Cassie's benefit. And then, holding the phone at arm's length, snapped a picture of himself puckering up as if to kiss the un-amused mule's nose. In the background, Betty had perked up her ears, the white star on her forehead catching the sunlight.

Jason sent that on, and then put the phone back to his ear. "See what I mean?"

"You're an _ass_," Cassie laughed. "I love you, you great big goofball."

"Actually, their fathers were asses. Of the donkey variety, of course. And I love you too. What's up? Called to find out what we do for fun in Kansas?" Jason tried to prop his arm on Patsy's withers and lean against her, but the mare adroitly stepped away just as he started to rest his weight against her, almost making him stumble. He went over to Betty and found her more congenial.

"Apparently play with mules and troll our girlfriends," Cassie replied. "No, really. I wanted to know if you had some free time away from prying eyes."

"Why Cassie, I had no idea you had a farmboy fantasy," he replied, trying to sound suave and not managing to suppress his snort of laughter. "We do have a lovely barn with a secluded hayloft for your convenience."

To his surprise, he heard two sets of feminine laughter. "_Oh my God!_" Cassie wheezed. "Jason! That is so not what I was thinking! Eww, hayloft, isn't that _itchy_?"

"You ask like I'd know!" he replied, indignant. "Who else is over there?"

"My sister. I don't think you've met Donna, have you?"

_Great. And now Donna Troy's first impression of me is bad innuendo. Thanks, Cassie. This is why I usually leave the trolling to Kala._ "No, we haven't met. Heard a lot about her, though." Of course, that was deliberately vague. Donna was a legend, even among the original Teen Titans with whom she'd trained. And there was some sort of recent tragedy that it hadn't been Jason's business to know.

"Yeah, well, I thought it might be a good time for you two to meet. With the whole situation going on right now." And that was a reference to his current lack of powers; Jason remembered hearing that Donna had been de-powered, too.

"Sure," he said. "I mean, the only one around right now is Grandpa Ben, and he knows about us—Dad and me and Kala and the legacy. I should probably ask if I can have visitors, though." Jason suddenly realized he smelled of hay, which was all right, but also of sweat and mule, which probably wasn't. He would need a shower before seeing Cassie.

"Do that, and call me back," she said. "We probably couldn't make it 'til tomorrow anyway."

That was complicated. "Tomorrow we're picking my sister up from the airport, and she'll be here the weekend with her boyfriend. Maybe that's good, they can run interference."

"We'll see. If all else fails we can come see you later. And Jason?"

"Yeah?"

"I love you. No matter what."

"I love you, too," and his heart leapt into his throat at those words. On that note they hung up, and Jason went inside.

…

In the midst of gloating over her most recent editorial—a work of genius that drove that final nail into the coffin of the Chinatown investigation—Lois' cell phone rang. She knew who it was by the ring tone, but answered with her business-voice out of sheer habit at first. "Lane, _Daily Planet_. Hey, Red, what's going on?"

Lana sighed in relief. "I was just about to drop in, if this is a good time."

"It's always a good time if you bring me lunch," Lois replied, chuckling.

For once, the redhead didn't return the humor. "Sorry, Lois, I didn't even realize it was lunchtime yet. I'm still a little scattershot. I can grab something…."

"No, come on up. I was just teasing," Lois insisted. Now she heard the utter exhaustion in Lana's voice, and it worried her.

"Actually, if it's all right I'll meet you at the café downstairs. I'll warn you, I need to ask a huge favor." Hell, she sounded stressed to her limit, and Lois had so very rarely heard that in Lana's voice that it unsettled her even more.

"C'mon, Red. Whatever it is, you've got it. You know that." Lois would've agreed to any request without even being asked. She wasn't a generous person by nature like her little sister Lucy, but this was _Lana_. The redhead wasn't just a good friend, she was one of the very few people who were in on the secret, and that as well as her marriage to Richard made her family. Besides, no one from Smallville would ask something serious without there being real need.

"Thanks, Lois. You're a lifesaver," Lana said tiredly, and hung up.

As she grabbed her purse to leave, Lois glanced left, past the Chief's office where Perry was haranguing some poor intern, to the International office. Kal-El wasn't there; he'd taken a long lunch to deal with some JLA business, but her gaze sought him when she worried. He was her touchstone in times of trouble—in all times, really.

In his absence she twisted her wedding band around on her finger, the gold warm and smooth. Martha's name was engraved on the inside, and Lois never forgot that the ring she now wore had seen so many decades of loving marriage. Despite some of the struggles she and Clark had weathered, their bond was just as powerful as the first two people to wear these simple, lovely bands.

Within fifteen minutes, Lana showed up at the café. It was a simple affair, just coffee, soda, salads, and sandwiches for those who forgot to brown-bag it. Lois had taken a table off to one side, and Lana dropped down across from her with a faint smile. "I'm sorry to spring this on you," she began.

Lois waved her off. "Come _on_. Lana, you know whatever it is, I'm on it. And if you have to spring it on me that just means you didn't have any warning either."

"Oh, but I did. I just didn't recognize it at the time." Lana rubbed a hand over her face, sighing. "This is just … it's all hitting at once, and there's so much to do."

Reaching across the table for her other hand, Lois used her best coaxing-secrets-from-a-source voice. "Red, tell me what's going on. Start from the beginning."

Lana took a deep breath and let it out. "All right. So you know Richard went down to Ft. Lauderdale two weeks ago, right?"

Lois nodded. He went to visit his parents more frequently as they were getting older, just to keep an eye out. Theo and Sylvia White lived in a very nice gated community with good security and friendly neighbors, but they were Richard's _parents_. Of course he wanted to take care. And he was a pilot, after all. He could fly down as often as he could afford the fuel, and that was pretty much whenever he wanted. Only business and family obligations in Metropolis kept him from dropping in every weekend.

"Sylvia's been acting a little odd, he told me the first night he went down there. Odd for Sylvia, that is. She's been cheerful and relaxed, and if it wasn't his mom, Richard would've asked if she was smoking pot. Plus she's been having insomnia, and … just little things. Putting the sugar in the fridge and leaving the milk on the counter. The kind of forgetfulness that happens when you get older, you know."

As someone who relied on sharpness of wit in her daily work, Lois dreaded the forgetfulness Lana spoke of so easily. It was bad enough that her particular kind of controlled-chaos went unaccepted as a valid organizational system, despite the fact that she could lay hands on any file or note she wanted to with minimal searching. If she actually started _losing_ things, losing track of where she'd left them, that would be a nightmare. And the thought of losing her memory, losing her _mind_ … Lois could barely suppress a shudder. No way. That wasn't going to happen to her, no matter what.

"No one thought anything of it," Lana was saying. "It wasn't a big deal. Richard was having a good time down there, I had everything under control up here, you know how it is. The world keeps on spinning like usual."

Lois nodded, wondering where this was going and not liking the hints her journalistic senses were giving her.

"So this morning, Richard gets up and he and Theo are talking about basketball while Sylvia's making the coffee, and they both hear a crash from the kitchen. Turns out she fell, she bumped her head on the floor, and they take her to the hospital because she seems a little out of it. On the way there, Richard notices her frowning and he tells his mom not to worry, they're just going to check her out, and she turns to him and says 'Of course I'm not worried,' only all of a sudden she sounds almost drunk, and the frown is only on one side of her face."

"Oh, no," Lois whispered, her heart sinking. Personality changes, forgetfulness, clumsiness, and then slurred speech and one-sided weakness: she knew what that added up to. "Sylvia had a stroke?"

Lana just nodded slowly. "So Sylvia's in the hospital, and Theo's going out of his mind, and Richard just called me because the doctor says it's probably not the first stroke she's had. There may have been other, smaller ones, before now, and nobody noticed. But her blood pressure is sky-high and so is her cholesterol, she's got hardening of the arteries, and God alone knows what _else_ is going on because Sylvia hasn't been to the doctor in two or three _years_ because she felt just fine."

Lois could only groan. That sounded perfectly in character for the woman who had once almost been her mother-in-law. Sylvia felt okay so she _was_ okay, and she was stubborn enough that no one could've convinced her otherwise. The risk factors were certainly there: Sylvia had always been a little on the heavy side, a woman who enjoyed her meals and thought calorie-counting was obsessive-compulsive.

But everyone else had thought her health was good, too. Lois certainly hadn't seen anything wrong with Sylvia the last time she'd been down to Florida with the twins. She got up every morning and made breakfast for herself and her husband, she walked her two psychotic Yorkies around the neighborhood three times a day, she gardened and went to her book club and played bridge with three other ladies in the same community. A healthy, active lifestyle for a woman her age.

"So what's the prognosis?" the reporter finally asked, dreading the answer.

"Not good," Lana murmured. "They're giving her medication to dissolve the clot, but there's not much else to be done. No one will give Richard a straight answer, though. He says it doesn't look good."

"And you need to be down there with him," Lois said, guessing the reason for the visit. Richard was perfectly capable of taking care of himself, but no one wanted to be alone when a parent was ill … or perhaps worse. And Lana would be the perfect person to help Theo and Richard both. Her serenity and optimism were unfailing; only the sense of having to force an obligation on someone else had rattled her now.

"I really do. But I can't pull Kristin out of school; her spring break isn't for another week, and they've got that ridiculous school-wide test right before it. There's no way she can come down, and really, she doesn't need to be there if Sylvia's doing that poorly. She just saw her grandparents at Christmas. If … if something does happen, that's how I want her to remember Sylvia. Not like this.

"As for the dogs, the pet-sitter we usually use is booked up, and I won't kennel them at the vet. It's too short notice for any of the boarding places I would use. And I can't bring them with me because of the Yorkies, plus Richard has our plane and I won't make Narcissa fly cargo. I'd leave them with your sister but she and Ron just got a new puppy, and that's enough adjustment; Kay and Laurel have cats that I don't know how Cissa would act around, so I can't ask them. And it's really not fair for me to come up to you at work with absolutely no notice and say 'Hey, Lo, can you take over my life for a while?' But that's sort of what I have to do." The redhead propped her elbows on the table with a frazzled sigh, staring across at Lois.

She could only laugh quietly. "Lana. Relax. Yes, Kristin and both dogs can come stay with us. Or I might even just hang out at your place and house-sit until you get home. I've got keys, and Clark can commute back and forth." That thought brought a smile; they both lived in penthouse apartments with convenient 'landing areas' for flying superheroes.

Lana reached across the table and took Lois' hands, squeezing gratefully. "Lo, you're a lifesaver. I don't know what I'd do without you."

"Hey, that's my line about you, Red," Lois replied, remembering everything back to the wedding dress—and the wedding itself, with Lana quietly and capably handling all the details that drove Lois crazy, as well as running interference between what the no-nonsense bride wanted and what the two old-fashioned romantic moms wanted.

Lana smiled at the joke. "You know, the way we met, I never would've guessed you'd turn out to be my best friend."

That called for some teasing to deflect the weightiness of the topic. "Yeah, right. Admit it, Lana: you only married Richard to keep me around."

Sea-green eyes finally sparkled with amusement. "Of course not. I married him to keep your twins around. You were a great add-on to the package, though."

"Atta girl. So when are you flying down?"

She ran a hand through her hair, thinking. "As soon as I can, probably. I don't need to pack much, and I can book the first flight with a seat available."

Lois nodded. "Call the school, tell them I'm picking up Kristin. Leave me a note on how much to feed the dogs. I'll handle everything, Lana. Just keep in touch."

"I will. Thank you, Lois." The two women stood up, and Lana hugged her tight before hurrying off.

For a moment after she left, Lois just stood quietly in the café. She and Sylvia had never gotten along, but she wished the older woman well anyway. The quarrels didn't matter; she was Richard's mother, and Theo's wife, and Kristin's grandmother, and for their sake Lois hoped she would beat the odds.

…

The flight to Kansas was annoying, Kala trying not to fidget and not quite succeeding. Dustin, at least, was happy; the lines didn't bother him, and the flight itself didn't seem slow. But then, he didn't have super-powered flight to compare it with. Kala could've covered the distance solo just during the time they waited to go through the x-ray machine at the airport!

It was no better once they took off. The view from the airplane window was far too limited for her taste. What was flying without the whole glorious Earth spread out below her, the warmth of the sun on her skin and the coolness of the clouds as she burst through them, and the ability to swoop down and take a closer look whenever she wanted? Not to mention, her solo flights never included a snoring business reclining his seat in front of her, and someone a row or two back who was vigorously chewing gum so loudly that even Dustin looked around in disbelief.

Still, Smallville was ahead, and Jason, who had sounded much more peaceful in his messages of late. Kala sighed and leaned on Dustin's shoulder. "I never knew you hated flying this much," he murmured.

She managed to chortle. "I don't hate flying. I _love_ it. I hate everything _around_ it. Weighing and measuring my bags, and taking off my shoes, and how four three-ounce containers are okay but one ten-ounce container is dangerous, and all the people who don't know those things and complain about them and hold up the line. And then the in-flight meal that's some nuts and half a soda, the bathrooms that I don't even wanna go near, and generally being jammed up like this with a bunch of people who don't really like being here either. All that, plus there could always be delays or whatever. It's just a negative experience." Kala sighed. "But you know, here we are sixty thousand feet up, and I'm annoyed with all that when I should be thinking how amazing it is that we take the whole thing for granted."

Dustin nodded. "I thought a rock star would be used to it by now, though." He was teasing her, gently as always, and Kala grinned right back.

"Nope, this rock star and her band mostly travel by van. The instruments are all too heavy to check as baggage, plus most of our shows have either been within driving distance of home or of the last show." Kala stretched her legs and glanced out the window again; they were getting close to Kansas City. "And when we hit the big time, we'll have one of those fancy tour bus rigs to travel in."

"See, I love that about you," Dustin pointed out. "You said _when_ we hit the big time, not _if_."

"Nice to know you appreciate my enormous ego and unfailing self-esteem," Kala teased.

"Nah, I like your willpower and your guts," he replied easily. "If you'd been born a hundred and fifty years ago, Kala, you would've been one of those women going, 'Heck yeah, I'll take fifty acres a week's journey from everyone and everything I know, and I'll build a house on land I've never seen before and make a farm and a life out of it. Free land? Sign me up!' Stuff like that doesn't scare you. You just dive in."

A slow smile curved her mouth. It was funny, for all her city-born and city-bred sophistication, Kala could see herself as a pioneer woman. The call of the frontier, the vast wilderness awaiting her discovery? It would've been irresistible. "I probably would've disguised myself as a boy and run away to get there sooner," she chuckled.

The 'Fasten Seatbelt' sign came on, and the pilot announced their descent. Kala and Dustin waited patiently through landing and disembarking, finally free to find the baggage carousel.

And waiting for them there were Jason and Wade, Dustin's older brother. At the sight of her twin, Kala beamed. He grinned too, throwing his arms wide, and called out, "Mothra!"

"Godzilla!" Kala yelled back, and pelted toward him. She leaped at him before remembering that might not be such a good idea without his super-strength, but Jason caught her and spun her around anyway.

"Hey now, who d'ya think you are, manhandling my girl?" Dustin said gruffly, thumping Jason's arm. His own brother hugged him and tousled his hair, and Jason let go of Kala long enough to return the punch on the shoulder.

The twins had only been apart a few days, but it felt like worry had stretched the time. Kala laughed now to see Jason. "You got a tan! And you have hay in your hair, you know. What're you, going native?"

"Might be," he said, and tweaked her nose. "C'mon, let's get the bags and get rolling, it's a long drive to town even in Wade's car."

Kala glanced over at her boyfriend's brother. "Wade, _please_ tell me you didn't bring that Karmann Ghia you were driving when we were out here last year."

"Nah, I sold that one," Wade said. "You'll like the car I've got now. She's a beauty."

That earned him a skeptical look. Wade had always favored sports cars or muscle cars, which made his current career as a stock car racing mechanic unsurprising, and his favorite cars generally weren't the thing for moving four people and luggage any significant distance. But when they walked out to the parking lot, the car he lead them to was a Cadillac. "Holy shit, you bought a caddy?"

"Came into Dad's shop with a shot-out transmission," Wade explained, popping the trunk. "The guy didn't wanna put that much money into it, so he offered to sell it, and I bought it. Rebuilt the tranny on my weekends, and now I've got a touring car. Gonna need the extra space, anyway."

"Oh yeah?" Kala asked, raising an eyebrow. _Something_ was up with that statement. She could almost guess….

Wade grinned broadly, the exact same grin as Dustin when he had good news. "Jenny's pregnant. She thought she might be, but she just found out for sure last week at the doctor's. We're gonna have a baby!"

"I'm gonna be an uncle?" Dustin said, as Jason and Kala both congratulated his brother. "Why didn't you _call_ me!"

"I did, little bro, and before I could give you the news, you told me you were coming home for the weekend, so I figured I'd tell you in person." Wade was beaming still, and Dustin hugged him joyfully. "Jenny's folks back in Pennsylvania are thrilled. We always spend a couple weeks with them while I'm at Pocono in the summer, but this year we're thinking we do the baby shower while we're there, with all her relatives back east. And maybe I'll bring the folks out, too. What's the point of making good money if you don't spend it a little?"

The drive to Smallville was full of laughter and excited talk, which Kala appreciated—but it didn't give her a chance to pick her brother's brain. On the phone last night he'd mentioned seeing Cassie and her sister, but Kala hadn't been able to press for details because the boys were hovering around her like a pack of starving dogs outside a butcher shop. Sebast wasn't the only one who was going to miss her fiercely, even if it was just a weekend. And of course there were a thousand questions that had to be answered before she could break away to pack. Thank God they hadn't had to cancel a show.

Dustin mentioned being hungry, so Wade pulled in at the diner in Smallville proper on the way to the Kent farm. The four kids sat down at a booth, and the waitress took their orders for burgers and fries and milkshakes. "Fell off the vegetarian wagon, huh?" Wade asked Kala. "You know they do a veggie patty now."

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, and those veggie patties are okay, but they don't taste like burgers. I'd rather take a whole portabello mushroom and grill _that_ and stick it in a bun."

Eventually the talk drifted around to family, and Wade asked after Jason's girlfriend. "I just spoke to her yesterday," he said. "Her sister wants to meet me."

"So we're at that meeting-the-family stage, huh?" Wade asked, with a wink at Kala. "You know the next thing is picking out a ring, right?"

Jason predictably blushed, and Kala snickered. "Yeah, meeting her dad might be a problem. I hear he's kind of … overwhelming." Considering that Cassie's father was the Greek god Zeus, that was understatement, and Jason chipped her ankle for it.

"No rings yet. And I already met her mom. The sister, Donna, well, I've been having to make some decisions lately, and she wants to talk to me about them."

From that statement, Kala quickly drew some parallels. She wasn't privy to Titans gossip, but everyone remotely connected to the caped community had heard of some kind of tragedy in the former Wonder Girl's life that had led to her early retirement. Had she, too, lost her powers? It drove Kala nuts not to be able to ask, but then, even if Dustin and Wade had been in on the family secrets, there were too many other people in the diner.

Like the two guys sitting at the counter, who kept looking at their table. At first Kala bristled with suspicion. She'd never quite forgotten what she'd learned from Nevada: their enemies could be hiding in plain sight at any time.

After a watchful moment, though, Kala figured out that they were just giving her the same disapproving, disbelieving look she was quite accustomed to. Not Smallville regulars, she didn't think, or they'd know her. But they were from _somewhere_ around here. She tried to ignore them and focus on the pleasant chatter at the table, and the bacon cheeseburger that had just been set down in front of her.

Until her hearing caught a whisper, something about kids who dressed like witches for attention. And that was the final straw. "Excuse me, guys," Kala said pleasantly, and got up. None of them thought anything of it, probably expecting her to head for the restroom—and then Jason groaned when he realized her destination.

Kala hopped up on the bar stool next to the two men. "Hi," she said brightly, holding out her hand. Good old-fashioned country courtesy prompted the first man to shake with her, though he looked startled, and when she leaned across him to reach the other guy, he shook her hand, too. Now both of them were staring exactly like the deer in the front yard at the farm when the porch light came on.

"You guys aren't from Smallville, are you? Somewhere up the road apiece, right?" The right rhythm and diction came to her naturally, as if the air in Smallville was pre-loaded with it, and Kala kept the sunny smile on even while she wanted to growl. But no, she could be her father's daughter as much as her mother's. Besides, Lana was living proof that kindness was as effective a weapon as cruelty.

Not that a smack across the face wasn't warranted at times, but then, people here were _still_ talking about the time Lana had slapped Jane Lutter for what she'd said about Lois bringing her two out-of-wedlock children to their father's hometown.

The two men were from Hartwell, not far away at all, and one volunteered that they were visiting relatives. "Cool," Kala said, leaning one elbow on the counter. "That's what brings me to Smallville, too. See, my dad's from here. You know the Kents, out on 129 just outside town? Clark Kent is my father. And my _mother_ is Lois Lane, better known as 'that Eastern gal' even now. Anybody in town can tell you stories about her, but they'll also tell you she's a real firecracker, and everybody who's anybody likes Ma Kent's daughter-in-law. Oh, and Lana Lang is sort of my stepmom, too. She's a Smallville girl through and through."

The name-dropping had worked, recognition in both men's eyes, and Kala grinned mostly to bare her teeth. "I'm not a witch, by the way. I'm a singer, and I happen to like black. Where I come from, we care more about who people are than how they dress. Which is why the guy in the plaid over there, looking like Farmer Ted Jr.? He's majoring in cosmology at Johns Hopkins—that's the same specialty as _Stephen Hawking_. He does astrophysics in his sleep—I mean he literally recites equations while he's asleep sometimes—though you wouldn't know it to look at him right now. Oh, and he's also my twin brother, but I didn't have a choice in that."

_And you wouldn't know I'm Superman's daughter to look at me, but that's half the reason why I'm Goth. No one suspects a legacy based on sunshine from someone who dresses like a vampire, and not one of the sparkly ones, either._ The thought brought genuine warmth to Kala's smile, and she caught the short-order cook smirking from the kitchen. "So yeah. Don't worry, I won't hex you. I may have been born in Paris and grew up in Metropolis, but I'm a Smallville girl by blood, too, and damn proud of it."

With that she hopped off the bar stool, sauntered back to the table, and dropped into her seat with a kiss on Dustin's cheek. "Sorry, just had to clear something up," she said innocently, and promptly stole one of Jason's fries even though she hadn't finished her own yet.

There was definitely something to be said for being the 'wild one' of her generation, and Kala was proud to be living up to Mom's legacy.


	26. The Echoes from Behind

Lois felt quite domestic, picking up Kristin and heading over to the Whites' apartment, where she grabbed the mail and somehow managed to get herself and Kristin and Kristin's backpack in the door without letting an overexcited beagle out. Narcissa stood in the hallway, a few paces back from the door, and as Lois walked in the Doberman retreated. "Hi, Cissa," Lois said, putting her stuff down on the nearest table. "Dusty, settle down!" As if in defiance, the red and white beagle jumped up to almost chest height, yodeling with joy.

"Mommy says we can't pay attention to Dusty until he stops being a spaz," Kristin volunteered. "She says even yelling at him is a kind of attention."

Lois privately felt that 'spaz' came from Richard's vocabulary, but she didn't call Kristin on it. "Okay, so let's ignore him," she said, though it was easier said than done. Lois decided to let both dogs out on the terrace; it was the best way of coping with Bagel and Chewie when they got excited, too. Then she returned her attention to Kristin. "Got any homework?"

"Science, English, and Social Studies," Kristin said, setting her backpack down on a window seat in the living room. "Can I have a snack first?"

The twins had always been ravenous in the afternoons at that age, and Lois fondly remembered making their afternoon snacks. Luckily for her, sandwiches, veggies and dip, and a variety of microwavable munchies were well within her culinary skills. "Sure thing. What are you hungry for?"

"PB&J?" Kristin said hopefully. Lois readily agreed, and was unsurprised to find that Lana had been hoarding some of the more unusual jams and jellies they found at farmers' markets on their trips to the mountains. At the sight of mayhaw jelly, which had a pleasant tartness she really enjoyed, Lois decided to join Kristin for the snack. The little redhead got the peanut butter and a knife, helping her make the sandwiches.

This was entirely too familiar, and very welcome. Thank God, there was still _one_ kid around between the four of them. Lois sighed quietly. Sometimes she loved having Kala and Jason more or less out of the house; little things like knowing her leftovers would still be in the fridge the next day were quite welcome, as was the freedom from nearly-constant twin-related distractions and interruptions. Not to mention the squabbling. But then sometimes she missed bitterly the days when she had been able to tuck her babies in at night, or see their delighted smiles at something so simple as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The memories had her biting her lower lip at the sudden ache of loss.

There were other joys these days, including the happiness at seeing them both become successful in their differing ways. Kala's band had a following in and around Metropolis, and they even had an album out, though it was self-produced and promoted. Whether her daughter became a household name or not, she was doing what she loved, and Lois had realized that Kala loved singing the way she herself loved writing a blazing good story. Meanwhile Jason was moving steadily toward his degree, constantly fascinated by the things he was learning and still in love with science.

Although … Jason hadn't yet sorted out the issue of his powers, and that worried Lois. Kal-El had never been de-powered for longer than a handful of days, and she wondered what the long-term effects were. She found herself beginning to wonder if it would be permanent—a fear that the entire family had felt, but none had voiced aloud to each other yet. If that was so, of course he would still be her son, her Buddha-boy, but Lois feared what it would mean to Jason. And to Kala. Something like this couldn't help rippling between both twins. They might be farther apart than ever in terms of miles much of the time, but the bond between them was as strong as ever.

Cissa called Lois out of her reverie by barking at the door, just two low woofs. Kristin, who had almost finished eating, bounced down off the bar stool at the breakfast nook and let both dogs in, where Dusty sat in the doorway and wagged hopefully at Lois and Kristin while they finished the sandwiches. Cissa went to get a drink and then disappeared, though once Lois got Kristin settled at the table and started on her homework, the Doberman reappeared to sit right beneath her seat. Kristin rested her bare toes on the big dog's back, and Cissa gave a sigh that even Lois could read as contented.

With everything squared away, she strolled toward the living room, pausing in the doorway to look back. Every once in a great while, she would remember _why_ Lana had adopted the Dobie, and why she had that small scar on both the back and palm of her left hand. Looking at the bright, sunlit kitchen with the little girl studious working on her essay for English and the big dog lying on the spotless tile floor, it was hard to remember how this kitchen had once looked. Lois could go months without thinking about it, but she would never forget how _obscene_ the blood had looked splashed around this cheerful space, how out of place the body on the floor had been. And how chilled she was to think that Lana might not have been the one to walk away.

Almost unwillingly, Lois turned to glance at the knife block. Lana had replaced her favorite chef's knife with an identical model. The original was still in police custody, even though the case had been resolved without any question of Lana's motive. Self-defense, plain and simple, and she had plenty of defensive wounds to prove it. The case was closed; she'd been attacked in her own home and fought back with the only weapon handy. That said weapon had been a ten-inch German-steel blade that had nearly decapitated her attacker was just circumstance.

Although Lois knew it wasn't as clear-cut as all that. Lana had only found her courage when she realized her daughter might be in danger. And then she'd been as fierce and unforgiving as Lois herself could be.

_Never underestimate a mother protecting her child,_ Lois thought, with an extra dose of vehemence toward Luthor. If only that full-length mirror on the yacht hadn't fooled her, she could've ended all of this while the twins were still babies, and that bastard wouldn't be lurking around the fringes of their lives still. L-Tech was still in existence, though it had undergone a complete change in management. And Lois had a few things in place to alert her of any unusual activity that might trace back to Luthor. He seemed to be lying low, according to her searches and contacts, but you never knew with him. Luthor would plot and plan and stay away for long periods, and then unleash something meant to destroy them all. Like Bizarro, for example, and Lois still couldn't help pitying that poor creature.

Lois shook the dark thoughts away and stepped into the living room, plopping down on Lana's leather sofa and taking out her phone. There was one guaranteed cure for her megrims, and she dialed him. "Hello, honey," Kal-El said warmly.

"Hey," Lois said, already smiling just from his tone. "So me and the munchkin are here at _chez_ White, and everything's cool. Haven't heard from Red or Richard yet, but I expect they'll get back to me. I'm planning on staying here tonight. Don't want to shake up Kristin's routine too much, and I really don't want to bring both dogs to our place. You know how Dusty and Chewie are." Dusty had grown up respecting Bagel, but he felt he had to put Chewie in her place, and the younger beagle didn't take kindly to that. Not that they actually _fought_, Lois had never seen more than a momentary flash of teeth, but it was startling how much noise could come from two twenty-five-pound dogs disagreeing on something like whose bed was whose.

"All right. I figure I'll go by our place and then head over there around dinnertime," he replied easily.

"Hmm, maybe tonight I'll just order pizza and we'll just have girl's night," Lois said thoughtfully.

Kal-El paused, and then said in mournful tones, "Are you throwing me over for pizza with a redhead? Lois, I'm crushed."

"Relax, you," she laughed. And then Lois lowered her voice. "You've got to be careful about how often and how easily you show up here. Kristin doesn't _know_, remember? You can't exactly touch down on the balcony over here." They'd already had one amusing incident a few years back where one of Kristin's teachers called up Lana, worried about her daughter's apparent inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Lana had had to explain that no, she really _did_ make an extra mug of coffee for Superman most mornings, hastily inventing the excuse that their apartment was on one of his regular flight routes and it was the least she could do for someone who spent so much of his time protecting the city.

Kristin had been warned not to talk about Superman's involvement with the family, and luckily she'd been old enough to understand that bad people would hurt Superman's friends when they couldn't hurt the man himself. Kristin's furious response had been that she would grow up to track down bad people so they would stop bothering Superman.

On the phone, Kal-El sighed. "Yes, but it's not inconceivable that a man would drive across town to see his beautiful wife and his youngest daughter, is it?"

"Maybe tomorrow," Lois teased. This was her perfect opportunity to play hard-to-get, something she hadn't been able to do in years. And it was always fun to spice things up a bit.

Kal-El chuckled, catching on. "I see. Well, if that's how you want to play it, I'll just kick back here and watch the Monarchs game. You'll have to make your own coffee in the morning, you know."

Lois scowled at the phone. "Very funny. I'll just train Cissa to work the coffeemaker. To listen to Lana talk, she'd be smart enough."

"Yes, but she doesn't have opposable thumbs," he countered. "You'll be fine. You managed for years without me catering to your every whim."

"Ha," Lois said flatly. Now she was _definitely_ going to make him work for it.

"I'll see you at work, though, for sure," Kal-El continued blithely. "And Lois?"

"Yes?"

"I love you."

Those three little words never failed to put a smile on her face, and it showed in her voice when Lois replied, "I love you, too."

She disconnected the call with a wistful sigh and a wicked grin, just in time for Kristin to call out from the kitchen, "Lolo, how do you spell 'disastrous'?"

Lois could only chortle. It just figured. "Dormouse, I am _so_ not the one to ask. Let me look that up in my phone."

…

Steph rather liked Batgirl—whose real name was Cass Cain, daughter of the assassin David Cain, and wasn't _that_ a head trip. She rarely spoke, and had a habit of trimming all unnecessary words out of a sentence when she _did_ speak. A legacy of her training, which had been early and extensive. She could be incredibly frank, more so than the rest of the Bats who seemed to love their secrets a little _too_ much for Steph's taste. (She would admit, if pressed, that not knowing her own boyfriend's real first name for months was probably a factor in that dislike of secrecy.) And yet Steph got the feeling that there was a lot about Cass that she didn't know. Not so much secrets as questions Steph hadn't figured out how to ask. They'd already bonded over their dads, both of whom sucked in different ways.

Cass was happy to have Spoiler's company most of the time, too, and Steph appreciated that. It seemed like she was always being chased off by Batman and even Tim, sometimes. Batman would tell her she had no place in something, and she'd slink away. Tim would just tell her to stay home, that she had to focus on her _real_ life. She wanted to tell him that dancing across rooftops was way more real than writing essays, but the haunted look in his eyes when he said it stilled her.

Batgirl had been very strictly controlled by both Batman and Oracle, a part of the Gotham City scene but still apart from it in many ways. Steph liked working with her; they weren't allowed to go after the masks, but there was plenty of plainclothes crime in town for them to chase. Steph even managed to convince Batgirl to spar with her, which given the fact that Cass had been in training since she could walk meant that Steph tended to end those sessions puking her guts out. The funny thing was, she got the feeling that Cass was amazed that she _came back for more _after the first time. Someone really needed to let her know about the famous Brown tenacity—more like thickheaded stubbornness, most of the time, but it served Steph well.

Only … the more time they spent around each other, the more Cass left her out of things. Not sparring, or just hanging out together, perched on a gargoyle over a thirty-story drop noshing on take-out like it was no big deal. But the more dangerous takedowns, the ones were Steph would've thought it made sense to have backup, Cass excluded her. And for once, wouldn't tell her why. Or couldn't. There certainly wasn't a word for the particular mixture of sadness and determination in her eyes when Steph demanded an answer.

The last straw came when Spoiler and Batgirl were investigating one of the Maroni family's side-pursuits, and it looked like they were about to be busted. Cass had turned toward Steph, moving so fast and fluid there was no chance of blocking, and then Steph woke up twenty minutes later with an apologetic Batgirl hovering over her, with five bound crooks just feet away.

Needless to say, Steph had been irate, but nothing she said could wring an explanation from Cass, who disappeared in a swirl of her cape. That had been the last straw. Pissed off and dammit, _hurt_ too, Steph had gone hunting for Batgirl's mentor.

Batman wasn't an easy guy to find, especially for Spoiler—a sidekick's sidekick, if she wanted to cruel about it. But she finally tracked him down. Or he knew she was looking and let himself be found, one or the other. "You need to rein in Batgirl," she said without preamble.

"Why?" he asked. The gruff voice and blank white lenses of his cowl might've been intimidating—hell, they _had_ been intimidating—but Steph was over it.

"Because she just knocked me unconscious right before a fight!" she snapped. "Seriously, I know she's really good, I mean _scary _good, let's be real, but everyone could use some backup, right?"

He only stared for a long moment. "Batgirl had the situation under control. She kept you out of it so you wouldn't get hurt."

"I can handle myself in a fight," Steph insisted.

"Not like she can."

She blew an irritated breath out of her nose. "Well, yeah, but she's still only one person. There were five of them, and they were armed."

Batman looked away, over the rooftops. Gotham seemed to stretch forever, from this vantage point. At last he answered, "And despite that, she handled them. Batgirl doesn't act lightly, Spoiler. You would have been a liability to her; her efficiency would've been compromised trying to protect you."

Her temper flared. "_Protect_ me? I wanted to _help_ her! That's all I've ever wanted to do, help out the good guys!"

"You try to be a force for good so as to balance out your father's crimes," Batman said flatly. "His sins aren't yours to atone for. It's _sentimental_, Spoiler, and there's no room for that in what we do."

He was so emotionless and cold that her anger flared to make up the difference. "Seriously? When did you double the dose of your grim-dark pills? _Everything_ we do is about heart! Protecting the innocent, sheltering the weak, all of that is sentimental but it doesn't make it any less _right!_" It had to be true. It _had_ to be. Otherwise what people like her father said about the Bats was the truth: that they were just as bad as any masked criminal, they gloried in fear and intimidation, only they were more selective about their targets.

Of course, with a moment's thought she would've known when his outlook darkened: when the prodigal son returned. When Jason Todd came home with blood on his hands and murder in his heart, seeking vengeance or perhaps just closure. He was in the city again, they all knew it. No one else could've been responsible for the string of murdered pimps and drug dealers. No one else was that precise, no one else destroyed the drugs, and in the case of one pimp, he'd been ID'd by a girl he'd driven to a women's shelter. All those guys had apparently crossed Red Hood's path somehow, though none of the Bats yet knew where he was or what he was planning this time.

"Go home, Spoiler," Batman told her. "You'll only find grief if you continue."

At that, Steph snarled at him. "The hell with you. You're doing it too. Everyone wants me to go home and be a good girl and stop playing capes 'n' robbers. _Well I'm __**not**__ playing!_ This is the only thing that makes sense to me, the only thing that feels right. I'm not throwing that away because I don't see the world through smog-tinted lenses like the rest of you."

There was no answer, just those blank white lenses and his mouth compressed to a stern line. Steph took a step nearer as another outrage occurred to her. "And how dare any of you tell me I'm not good enough! I was _Robin_, dammit!"

No one could really read the Bat himself, not with any kind of certainty, but Steph had worked with him enough to get something of a sense for his moods. Plus she had Cass' almost-creepy skill at reading body language to learn from. Just then, he seemed to be holding himself _too_ still, as if the natural movements of breath and pulse would give away something he didn't want her to know.

Of course. Of _course_. She'd thought it to herself before, but only now did Steph say it aloud. "Or was I? Tell me the truth, Batman. Did you shove me into Robin's tights just to goad him into coming back? Because if that's really what you did, you're a bigger choad than I ever thought. And you were already pretty high on my personal scale of dickitude."

"You're insulting me because you're angry," he said in that flat voice. "The question is, Spoiler, are you angry at me? Or yourself, for not being who you want to be? There aren't many like the current Batgirl, and she's paid a steep price to be who she is. Don't be so eager to wear that mantle. It's heavier than you think." With that he stepped off the edge of the roof and glided into the darkness.

Steph was left panting with rage … and beneath her cowl, her eyes were glassy. _I was right. I was __**right**__, and he can't even admit it to me._ Scalding tears ran down her cheeks, shame and grief and a little pity mixed in. "I'll show you," Steph muttered. "I'll show you _all_."

…

With Kala and Dustin at the farmhouse, Jason found it harder to make time for Cassie. He'd hoped that Kala could run a little interference for him, but Dustin seemed to have picked up on the fact that something was wrong, and he didn't want to let his best friend out of sight.

"I am attempting to arrange a meeting with Cassie, but we cannot allow Dustin to know that my girlfriend can _fly_," Jason muttered to Kala as they washed dishes after lunch, using Kryptonese for an extra layer of security.

"He already thinks the beautiful blonde is out of your league," Kala replied, her eyes sparkling. "He would never believe his favorite lizard-friend dates a demigoddess."

It was completely weird that her command of the language—their mother tongue, after all—was so much more fluid than his, even now. Kala could tease and make jokes lightly in it, whereas his phrasing was rarely that natural. "Cease your taunting," Jason grumbled.

"I believe I can secure a few hours alone for you, brother," Kala said, with a grin. And then as she finished rinsing the last glass, she turned the sink sprayer on him and splashed his face before running away, laughing.

That was Kala through and through, being helpful and a dorky pain in the butt at the same time. Jason rolled his eyes and wiped the water off on his shirtsleeve, putting the last few dishes away. "Thanks for your help," he said sarcastically as he walked into the living room a few minutes later, his hair still damp.

"You're welcome," Kala said with a bright grin. "Hate to tell you this, Lizardbro, but you and Grandpa are on your own for dinner tomorrow night. Dustin's parents want me to come over while we're in town. I expect the third degree."

"They've known you since you were _six_," Dustin sighed, tousling her hair.

Jason sat down across from them, wondering how Kala had managed this so quickly—or if she'd already known about it even before he complained. "They've known Kala that long, and they still haven't checked you into an asylum for dating her," he sighed, shaking his head at Dustin. "I dunno, man. They can't be _happy_ to have Emily the Strange over for dinner."

Dustin scoffed, Kala stuck her tongue out, and they gave each other hell for a while. Things felt almost normal … but Jason was constantly reminded that they weren't.

Still, he ended up with a few uncluttered hours the next day in which to meet Cassie and Donna. The property was large enough that Jason picked a fairly secluded stream to meet by, pointing it out on a satellite image map online; the girls couldn't just come to the house given the chances of a neighbor or acquaintance dropping in.

Jason was a little nervous, actually. Donna had been an original Teen Titan, and she was Wonder Woman's sister—a twin, too, in a different way. Amazons had a much closer relationship with magic than Kryptonians, and a set of twins who were years apart in age was no big deal.

He thought of trying to make a good impression, and then realized Cassie would immediately notice and probably laugh at him. She did adore his earnestness, but she twitted him about it almost as much as Kala. So instead Jason went for the casual look, strolling out in jeans and a flannel shirt, still disturbed that the cool air of the spring evening made the long sleeves necessary. It had been years since he wore warm clothes for anything other than camouflage.

In town, Kala was sitting down to dinner with the Carmichaels, and out here on the farm, Jason was carefully skirting brambles to find the spot he'd chosen. Young willow trees followed the stream that divided the Kents' plot from the Hubbards'; this whole area was almost marshy, and had been left essentially wild with cultivated fields on either side. Grandpa Ben loved it, as it was excellent habitat for the rabbits and hares that he hunted with his beagles. The stream itself was also a good fishing stream, and of course the brambles would be heavy with berries in season. Deer also used the cover to move between fields, feeding on crops and in turn being hunted come fall.

At last Jason came to his designated meeting spot, where the stream briefly deepened into a pool and an enormous cottonwood tree offered its shade. On the other side of the water was a large pink boulder that had been called the Kissing Rock since at least his great-grandparents' generation. Jason knew from his childhood explorations of the farm that the stone was Sioux quartzite, rolled all the way here from Minnesota by prehistoric glaciers.

Cassie was currently sitting on top of the rock, looking over at Jason with a faintly long-suffering expression. Beside her was Donna, holding a camera and leaning out at a precarious angle to photograph something on or in the pool. "Hi, Jase," Cassie called, waving. He waved back, not wanting to spoil the shot for Donna.

The camera clicked, and Donna finally sat up, looking over at him. He'd never seen her in person before, and her resemblance to Diana was very strong. The same wavy black hair, the same classical Greek beauty, but the blue eyes were completely different for all they had the same shade. Jason knew at fifty feet that Donna had none of her big sister's tranquility. Wonder Woman was a princess, a politician, and a warrior; with one look she could give the impression that she had any given situation under control. Donna's gaze held a different, hard-won serenity, one that Jason found familiar from Lana of all people. His stepmother had gone through some very trying times, and the peace she carried with her was a balancing act she'd fought to sustain. Donna had much the same look, a survivor's gaze.

"Hi," he said, strolling forward. There were stepping stones set here, and fortunately the spring rains hadn't raised the creek above them yet. Technically the two girls were on the Hubbards' land, but the families had never made too much of a fuss about property lines, especially not since Ben and Martha had married.

Once he reached them, he held out his hand to Donna. "I guess you already heard I'm Jason Kent."

She shook with him, smiling. "And I guess you've heard about me, too. Cassie wanted me to talk to you—but I know she wants to talk to you, too, and I want to photograph that tree in this light, so I'll give you two a minute."

Donna hopped off the boulder and set about capturing the tree in film. Cassie shrugged, but Jason understood. He sometimes had bits of melodies occur to him that simply _had_ to be written down to be played later, and he was less driven by art than Kala, who had committed two years and a whole lot of money just for the _chance_ of singing professionally.

He scrambled up beside Cassie, and she kissed him. "And that's why they call this the kissing rock," he chuckled, returning the kiss. "What's up?"

"Nothing new," she admitted. "I just miss seeing you in person. Online is a good way to keep in touch, but it doesn't replace the real thing."

"No, it doesn't," he agreed, slipping his arm her shoulders.

They spent a little time in quiet small talk, though it seemed to falter here and there. Jason was amazed at how much he could miss in just a week of being out of the loop on the Titans' latest news.

The real reason he'd borrowed this time, though, was to talk to Donna, and she signaled her return by snapping their picture. "You two are adorable," she chuckled.

"Donna," Cassie laughed back, just shaking her head. "All right, I guess it's my turn to disappear for a while. I'll see you both later." And with that, she kissed Jason one more time and flew off.

They both watched her go. "You never had flight, did you?" Donna asked.

Jason scoffed. "Never _wanted_ it. My sister was obsessed from about age eight, and she finally got it. Me, I like my feet on the ground."

Donna looked at him then, the quick look of piercing intelligence that he'd gotten more than once from the veteran heroes. "You sound like me. I _liked_ the flying, though. But I always wanted, well, a normal life."

"I know that feeling," Jason agreed, and patted the smooth, flat top of the rock. "C'mon up. I don't like looking down at people."

"No wonder you're not a flier, then," Donna said with a smirk.

…

Elise still had two years of college, minimum, before she attained her bachelor's degree, but it was never too soon to think about the future. And her own future was beginning to look a lot hazier than ever before.

This semester's course load was heavy on the hard chemistry, which she'd always liked in school. Except … it turned out she liked the lab part a whole lot more than memorizing lots of complicated chemical reactions. Elise preferred to get hands-on experience wherever possible, and while the labs for her advanced chem courses were fascinating, she found herself lagging in the lectures.

Her _favorite_ class was actually biochemistry. And the professor who taught it was really good at his job; Dr. Chisholm made the driest information seem fascinating. Technically he belonged to the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, not the Department of Chemistry from which Elise had planned to get her degree. The notion of tweaking her major had already begun to occur to her before Dr. Chisholm decided to talk to her.

A slim, dark-skinned man of about her own height, Dr. Chisholm wore bifocals and dressed more like a businessman than a typical college professor. He caught her leaving class one day and asked her what seemed like a simple question. "What are you planning to do after college, Ms. Thorne?"

Elise shrugged. "There are always research jobs for chemists."

"Research," he said, nodding. "I'm not surprised. You have a feel for the lab work, and an inquisitive mind. Although, considering how well you've done in my class, I was also wondering if you had a particular reason for choosing chemistry over biomolecular engineering…?"

She sighed. "Chemistry was my favorite class in high school. I didn't really look at all the broader options when I signed up. I've actually been thinking about the same thing, myself. I want to work in a lab, I want to discover new things, I want to be able to really _help_ people."

"And you're realizing that biochem and its related fields are the wave of the future," Dr. Chisholm said, his dark eyes shrewd behind the glasses. "You know, of course, that we have a highly recognized post-grad program here on clinical research protocols. And once you get through your bachelor's, the research possibilities are endless."

"Oh, I know," Elise admitted. She'd seen the research facilities on the first-day tour, and couldn't help imagining herself in those labs.

"Hmm. Well, I may have an opportunity for you, whether you stick to chemistry or switch to biochem. Although of course I'd love to see you come over to my department. There's an internship opening up this summer, _extremely_ limited. In fact they're only seeking one student, on my personal recommendation. It could be a foot in the door for major research opportunities after you graduate."

Elise bit her lip. She'd planned to take a few extra courses this summer, but that sounded like a great offer. Almost _too_ good, in fact. "Why would they want a sophomore for this kind of thing?" she asked.

Dr. Chisholm shrugged. "I imagine it's going to be more along the lines of taking notes than anything truly exciting, honestly. Exactly the sort of grunt work an undergrad will take on in hopes of better offers later."

That sounded more reasonable, and Elise nodded slowly. There was no glamour in being a secretary, basically, but he was right. An underclassman would jump at the chance just to be around _real_ research. Even knowing the situation didn't rein in her interest.

Apparently she didn't seem enthusiastic enough. Dr. Chisholm continued, "This is one of the largest, strongest, and most reputable companies around. You should at least give it a look. I can give you the card and let you think it over this week, then you can meet them on the weekend … or give me back the card Monday and I'll try to find someone else."

"I'll definitely give it a look," Elise said, and Dr. Chisholm handed her the card with a smile before moving on to his next class.

Elise turned it over curiously. No fancy graphics here, just fine card stock with the name printed in simple, elegant font. But then, even she recognized _that_ name, and her eyebrows shot up. "Wow," she muttered.


	27. Immobilized at the Crossroads

**It's terrifying that this hour is now what I consider 'late'. Actually, this is to the point of 'obscenely late' to me now. What is the world coming to? *winces*  
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**Also, we answered a few questions in this chapter that you're all asked about. Now, I'm not say just *how* fully, but... ;) And anything that looks too simple a solution? Don't 100% trust it.**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

><p>Jason wasn't sure what, exactly, he was supposed to talk to Donna about. Shared commiseration over the loss of their powers? Advice for dealing with normal life when you were used to punching through steel?<p>

What _she_ wanted to talk about, it turned out, was that normal life. "I had it all," she said, once they got on the topic. "Husband, son, house, car, a nice little life for myself. I went from Titan to housewife, and Jason, I _loved_ it. I liked taking care of the house, planting flowers along the walk, teaching Robbie nursery rhymes, having dinner on the table for Terry when he got home. Even my photography was more of a hobby than a career, but I was doing what I loved, and that's what mattered."

"That sounds like a pretty good life," Jason admitted.

"Something you'd like?" Donna asked.

He grinned. "Yeah. I don't know about the gardening thing, but I _can_ cook." That startled a laugh out of her, and he shrugged. "It's the 21st century, men can be house husbands if they want and if their wives are cool with it. But yeah, I want that—a house and a family."

"Which most of us don't get in the hero business," Donna said. "I think part of the reason I jumped at that chance was … well, I was one of the original Titans. I was saving the world before I could _drive_. That kind of pressure gets really intense."

"Yeah. Yeah, it does," Jason agreed, nodding. "And if you're part of the leadership, too? Oh man, it's like the whole world is riding on _you_."

"So I saw a way out, and I bolted, and I had the life I wanted." Donna sighed and looked away. "The life I _thought_ I wanted."

"What went wrong?" Jason asked quietly.

Donna turned to him with a quizzical look. "You don't know?"

He shrugged. "I don't pry into other people's business."

For a long moment, Donna stared out over the fields. Birds sang in the hedgerows, and somewhere in the distance a tractor was running. When Donna spoke again, her voice was quiet and controlled. "Terry … was my college professor. A lot older than me. I liked that about him, though. I liked that he had his life together; I liked that he didn't get all tongue-tied over Wonder Girl. I'd been around so many boys that a real _man_ just swept me off my feet. But what you like about a person when you're thinking about dating them has a way of becoming the very same thing you hate about them when you're married."

Another pause, and she glanced at him. "I don't know why I'm telling you this."

"Because it's about the life you choose and the life that was laid out for you before you were born?" Jason speculated. "Also maybe because I don't know, and I don't judge people. Ever."

Donna nodded slowly. "Yeah, maybe. Anyway. Long story short, it got to the point where the only reason I stayed was Robbie. And then … the accident. From Titan to housewife in one leap, and then from housewife to widow in one horrible night."

Jason didn't know what to say. That kind of tragedy, he just couldn't imagine. Heck, he couldn't imagine how Donna stayed sane. "I know it's not much, but I'm sorry to hear that." The words sounded paltry, and he covered her hand with his, giving it a gentle squeeze.

She smiled wanly, squeezing his fingers once. "Thank you. I'm … better. Healing, at long last, and I never thought I would. My point is, even before the accident, I was starting to think I'd made the wrong choice." Donna laughed a little. "I never talked to anybody about this. Just recently I told Dick, and I always told him everything, but when I was in the middle of it, laying awake at night wondering what the hell I was going to do, I never told him."

Jason kept quiet, thinking, and then said, "The difference is, I didn't choose to lose my powers. This got thrown at me, and maybe … maybe it's meant to be."

Donna arched an eyebrow and gave him a too-knowing look. "Are you so sure?"

…

Morning of their last day in Smallville, and Kala woke with the sun, as always. She snuck outside in her pajamas for a sunbath, soaking up the golden rays, and sighed happily. As much as she loved the farm, she was ready to get back to Metropolis. A three-day weekend was time enough to see family and friends, time enough to enjoy the peace and quiet, time enough to take a mule trail-riding and be thrilled to spot a bobcat crossing the stream. Kala knew from experience that staying too long, say anything over two weeks, would only draw her attention to the things Smallville lacked: twenty-four-hour stores, her favorite brands of makeup and clothing (with the exception of L. Lang jeans), and a good Indian restaurant. And she had always made it a point to never get _to_ that point.

She also missed the anonymity of Metropolis. Back home, Kala could travel six blocks and find herself in a crowd of strangers. She could use super-speed and flight with only a careful check to make sure no one saw her taking off and landing, and no one ever questioned how she'd arrived anywhere. In Smallville, where absolutely everyone knew her, she had to take travel-time into consideration. If she were seen at the general store at eight in the morning, and then at the gas station on the county highway at five minutes after eight, _someone_ would notice and comment.

When she heard sounds of movement in the house as someone else got up, Kala dragged her mind away from those thoughts and went back indoors for a quick shower in the hall bathroom. She came back to her bedroom to pick out her clothes for the day, letting the steam disperse and the mirror un-fog so she could do her makeup.

Dustin had stayed over last night—something to which Grandpa Ben turned a blind eye—and for once he wasn't out of bed at the same time she was. Of all the mornings for him to be a lazy bum. Kala frowned, and nudged him. "Hey, sleepyhead, wake up. It's Sunday."

He only made a fuzzy noise and buried his face more deeply in the pillow. Kala poked his shoulder. "Dustin. Honey, getting up is kinda a priority. We have a plane to catch. C'mon."

"Fi' minu's," he mumbled, which Kala knew from years of living with Jason meant he wanted five more minutes. She shook her head and sighed, heading back into the bathroom. It would've been nice to use super-speed, but eyeshadow tended to get powdery when applied that fast, and eyeliner would smear, so Kala took her time, amusing herself with the notion that at least Dad never had to worry about this.

It was more like ten minutes when she returned to the bedroom to find Dustin still hugging his pillow in a death-grip. "Seriously, I love you, but we have to get moving. Wade's gonna be here to pick us both up in an hour. We've got to get dressed and finish packing and have breakfast."

His reply was unintelligible even to her. Kala leaned down and kissed his hair, then his ear, murmuring, "Oh, stop grumbling. Don't you want to go home?"

"I am home," Dustin mumbled in a sleep-thick voice.

That simple, sincere phrase shouldn't have scored so deeply, and yet it did. Kala froze while the words processed. _Oh God_. Her heart crashed right out of her chest, straight through the pine floor beneath her feet, dropped through the living room below, and ended up somewhere in the root cellar among the cobwebs and the smell of stored potatoes. For a long moment she just stood there, looking at Dustin with her tongue glued to the roof of her mouth and her eyes starting to sting. The worst part about it was that she had known. Somewhere deep down, she had known it was only a matter of time.

There was no way he would ever say those words to her while awake, but … that didn't make them any less true. To deny it to herself would be blatant foolishness. Smallville _was_ home for Dustin in a way it never would be for Kala. Hadn't she just been thinking about how she couldn't stay here for more than two weeks without the homey closeness starting to chafe?

Kala sat down on the edge of the bed, feeling lost and alone and bereft while mere inches from the best guy she'd ever dated. Dustin loved her like crazy, and she loved him the same way. But she _couldn't_ make him live in Metropolis for the rest of his life; he might do it for her, but it would be cruel. And while their time on the road had been fun, even then she had known he was longing for home. It didn't matter that she'd gotten him to try vegetable biryani and he'd liked it, Smallville would always call out to him as _home_. The sound of a whippoorwill calling at dusk, the long straight miles of empty road, the fields green with corn or golden with wheat, the impossibly broad blue sky overhead, all of it was his world.

Just the same way that the hustle and bustle of Metropolis, or any major city really, called out to Kala. The traffic, the sounds, the skyscrapers, the neon lights, the funky little shops tucked away in corners, the neighborhoods alive with personality, the constant mix and flow and blend of dozens of personalities and backgrounds and ethnicities all rubbing elbows in the arteries of the great city. A world where she could have the best bagels in town for breakfast, stop at a falafel cart for lunch, and then swing by a taco truck for dinner, all within a mile of each other, all delicious and fresh. A world where people actually organized gallery crawls and museum crawls, the arts and culture scene was so hot. A world where a Goth girl with purple streaks in her hair and silver eyeliner was _ordinary_. To Dustin it was all a whirl of constant interruption and diversion, but Kala loved the novelty and the fast pace.

What was she going to do? She _loved_ Dustin. It hadn't been like this with Nick, as nuts as she'd been about him. It certainly hadn't been like this with Alan, also known as The Great Mistake. Hell, it hadn't even been like this the first time around with Dustin, when they'd been starry-eyed and ridiculous.

God, now she knew how Mom had felt the first time that ugly word _divorce_ had been brought up. Kala leaned her head in her hands and tried to puzzle out some kind of solution, already suspecting there wasn't a good one.

Just then, her phone rang, and she grabbed it as much to keep the mariachi ring tone from waking Dustin as to distract her from her thoughts. "Hey, Gomez, what's up?"

"Are you sitting down, _mamacita_?" Sebast asked.

Oh hell, he sounded serious, and he hadn't called her Morticia in response to the Addams Family joke that Jason had unwittingly started. Kala felt her stomach do a slow roll. What _now_? She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. "Yeah. _Dígame_."

On the other end of the line, she heard Sebast taking a deep breath too. "So that one shady-looking guy at the last gig? The one asking all the questions? He called back. Kala, he's an agent. _He wants to sign us._ We have an actual offer from an actual recording label."

That news left Kala vapor-locked. She wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry; signing with a label was a _huge_ deal, pretty much the first real step toward her dreams, and it should've been the best new Kala had heard in weeks. But right now it just sounded like one more bell tolling for the end of her relationship with Dustin.

…

Kal-El didn't know what to expect from this meeting with Zatanna. She wouldn't tell him anything about Jason's situation over the phone, which did make sense—phone calls could be intercepted and recorded, after all. But he couldn't help feeling unsettled by the lack of even a _hint_.

So he was already tense when he arrived at the designated meeting spot, a theatre at which Zatanna would be showcasing her sleight-of-hand and other stage-magic skills later on. Her stage manager, Mikey, was setting up when Kal-El got there, but the woman knew about her boss' secret identity. "C'mon backstage," Zee said with a tip of her head.

Behind the plush black curtain was a whole other world of props and catwalks and rigging, which Zatanna navigated smoothly and Kal-El just tried to follow without bumping into anything. Zee finally made a turn into a dressing room and closed the door behind Kal-El. "I can see that you're worried, so I'll get right to the point," Zatanna said. "I've done literally everything I can think of to find the root of this problem. Scrying, tarot, a minute examination of both the opponent and the gauntlets he was wearing, _everything_. And I've seen Jason himself several times, including at Smallville—nice little town you have there, by the way."

Kal-El knew a summation when he heard one. "I understand, and thanks. So what's your conclusion?"

She sighed and tugged at the gloves she was wearing. "Honestly? From what I can find, this never should've happened in the first place. And from what I can sense, it actually _didn't_, in a way."

Frowning, he asked, "What do you mean, it didn't happen?"

"There's nothing wrong with Jason. _Nothing_. He has zero background magic operating on him at any given time—and other than some ley lines and Native American burial sites, Smallville is pretty neutral ground, magic-wise, so I'd be able to sense even something very minor."

That took a moment to process, Kal-El just blinked as Zatanna looked up at him intently. "There's nothing wrong…?"

"There is no magical influence blocking his powers. There _might_ have been in the beginning, right after he was struck; it's within the capability of the enchantment on those gauntlets to short-circuit a super-powered being. But that's a very temporary phenomenon."

"It's been almost two weeks," Kal-El pleaded.

"Yes, and his powers should have recharged normally by now, but they haven't. Jason told me that even the main computer at your place up north told him there's nothing wrong." Zee adjusted the gloves again, which Kal-El realized was a nervous tic for her, similar to Lois and running her hands through her hair.

Slowly, he nodded. "His kryptonelles—the microcellular structures that fuel our powers—are intact but dormant. That's what the results of that scan were."

"Right. So the cause of his continued lack of power _isn't_ magical. It can't be. And magic can't fix it, either, because believe me, I've tried." Zatanna gave a self-deprecating little chuckle, and added, "I've tried to the point where I'd better not screw up a trick tonight, because I don't have the reserves to back up stage magic with the real thing."

"Zatanna," Kal-El began, worried, and she held up a hand to halt him.

"_Don't_ start, you know I don't run myself completely powerless unless the world's at stake, but I'm definitely going to be driving instead of teleporting for a while. It's worth it. He's your son, and he's a good kid, too. Only guy who's ever asked me if I could put on some pants." She smirked at that, clearly amused.

That did win her a chuckle. "I'm not surprised. His mom _is_ Lois Lane." Kal-El had long ago stopped paying attention to the uniform choices of his female colleagues, but even he knew that Zatanna's stage outfit turned heads everywhere. Jason was more used to form-fitting spandex than fishnets all the way up to hipbones, so of course he'd been embarrassed and uncomfortable. Which was a good thing, from a fatherly perspective. Better than the leering _some_ people thought was an appropriate response, and which Zatanna tended to handle with some very subtle magic.

"Now, I've got a couple of theories," Zatanna said. "One is … well, you know I lost my powers once, right?"

"I remember hearing about that," Kal-El said.

"I thought my magic was … dying, essentially." That candidly-spoken sentence hid a wealth of dread, and Kal-El nodded in acknowledgement of it. He did know a few things about the loss of powers that had always been there, even if in his case it was completely voluntary.

Zatanna continued, "As it turned out, I'd made some mistakes, and each one cost me self-confidence, and as John Constantine would tell you, magic is _all_ confidence. In his case, usually in the sense of a con game, but then he never was one to waste magic when psychology would do." She smiled wryly as she spoke his name.

"Right, that makes sense. Your powers are essentially mental, and confidence plays a large part in that. But ours are physical."

"How do you know that?" Zatanna countered. "Yes, there's a physical component in the form of these kryptonelles, but that's only part of the equation. We don't know the exact mechanism for _any_ of your powers, Kal. What if those kryptonelles are generating … something, some form of energy, that you're manipulating by an act of will?"

"Most of my powers work without me having to think about them," Kal-El replied. Thinking of it that way was odd, to say the least.

"All right, but what about flight? You don't just float off like a balloon whenever you stop thinking about staying grounded," Zatanna pointed out.

He had a quick answer for that. "I _have_ taken flight unintentionally. One of the first times was while I was asleep."

Zatanna responded, "And probably dreaming about flying, like a lot of people do. The thing is, Kal, there's no physical or magical cause for Jason not to have powers right now. So it _has_ to be mental."

Kal-El paused, thinking deeply. It all made sense, but he'd never given it any thought before. Zatanna folded her arms and looked at him seriously. "It makes me wonder, when you have two children whose power sets show almost no overlap in intensity. There's no power, except invulnerability, where the two of them are close to the same level. Jason's strongest powers match his personality, and Kala's match hers, from what I hear. Most telling, she can fly, and he can't."

"Why is that telling?" Kal-El had to ask.

"Because according to Jason, his sister has always wanted to fly, always been zooming off in search of something new and fascinating, even before she knew you were her father. And he never wanted it. He's the most _grounded_ person I've met, in all senses of the word. So maybe they didn't inherit a genetic predisposition for certain powers. Maybe what they both inherited was the ability to express powers, and developed the ones that were in sync with their personalities."

His jaw actually dropped a little. That could be the case. Kala certainly had the gifts she found most useful: hearing and speed and flight, with just enough of the others to get by. And Jason had the powers most suited to his own way of being. "So, if the expression of our powers is mental, you think Jason's suffering from a lack of confidence?" That part of the equation still didn't make sense; Jason was one of the most quietly confident young men Kal-El had ever met, even factoring in fatherly pride.

Zatanna shook her head. "No, I don't think confidence is exactly his problem. I'm not sure what _is_, to be perfectly honest. But I _do_ have an idea as to how we can get his powers to kick back in."

"You do?" The hopeful news brightened Kal-El's day considerably.

"Yes, but it's going to take some staging, and you won't like it," Zee said.

It turned out she was right on both counts.

…

Dr. Chisholm had been right: the internship was pure grunt work, mainly data entry, but Elise was floored by the facility itself, as well as the research being conducted there. Everything was top-of-line and state-of-the-art, and not just the high-tech equipment. All the chairs were ergonomically designed, each workstation was adjustable to exactly the right height and angle for each individual's comfort, and even the coffeemakers in the break room were high-end models designed to brew a single perfect cup in seconds. Elise wanted to work in an environment like _this_, where no expense had been spared in creating an efficient and comfortable lab.

And then the research … if the setting whetted her appetite, the research was making her salivate. No details, of course, since she was just a prospective intern, but she caught snatches of conversation and glimpses of work in progress. New synthetic polymers based on the silk of certain spiders, which promised a strength greater than steel cable in a slender, flexible strand. A chemical compound that bound to specific receptors in the brain, which rendered the recipient immune to a large variety of mind-altering substances for several hours. And a liquid substance, the origin and composition of which Elise didn't learn anything about, but in her brief glimpse she saw it transform from an unassuming puddle to a three-dimensional rigid structure, based on the application of _sound waves_, of all things.

Never before had she understood the saying about selling one's soul for something. At that moment, she did. _This_ was her field, this was right on the cutting edge, and she hungered to be involved in it somehow.

Luckily there was no Faustian contract to sign, just a ten-page non-disclosure agreement with many aggressive clauses and dire warnings. Elise read it thoroughly, but nothing there diminished her desire to jump on _any_ chance of an in with this company, so she signed with a flourish and was officially an intern of Wayne Enterprises.

…

The call came in late on Lois' third night at the Whites' penthouse. She was still dodging Kal-El, who was playing along now. Last night's phone call, well after Kristin was asleep, had been so full of double-entendre that Lois privately thought they'd invented triple- and possibly _quadruple-_entendre. At this rate they'd end up sexting like a couple of randy twenty-somethings.

So when her cell phone rang that late, Lois reached for it with a grin that lasted only until the realization that it wasn't his ring tone. Instead it was Lana's, and Lois took a deep breath. "Hey, Red."

"Lois," she said quietly. "Sylvia had another stroke an hour ago. It … well, it wasn't good."

"How bad?" Lois asked.

"She's in a coma. They don't think she'll come out of it, but Richard and Theo want to wait and see. Miracles do happen, you know." Somehow the lack of tears in her voice made it worse. That calm, sorrowful acceptance put a spike of pain in Lois' heart.

"Lana, honey, I'm sorry." Lois leaned her forehead into her hand. _Dammit. Sylvia, why couldn't you have gone to the doctor? Hell, why didn't Theo make you? Why didn't Richard or Theo or __**somebody**__ nag you into it?_

Lois knew the answer, though. It was the very same reason she was overdue for a doctor's visit herself. All of the dire warnings in the world seemed ridiculous when you felt good. Not just good for your age, but _good_. Those things happened to other people, not you. It was easy to believe in your own immortality, because the alternative was scary as hell.

"It is what it is," Lana said. "I just wanted you to know. And, um, when you talk to Kristin, just tell her that Grandma Sylvia is very sick and might not get better. I trust you to have that conversation with her."

That thought was a punch in the gut. Kristin had gone to Martha's funeral months ago, and she was old enough to understand the finality of death, but young enough to feel its unfairness keenly. "Sure, Red. Whatever you need. Besides I still owe you for all the 'your mom isn't a total bitch' conversations you had with Kala."

"Oh, Lois, you know you never do anything by halves," Lana teased gently.

Lois chuckled. "Is that your way of telling me I _am_ a total bitch?"

"I'd never say such a thing. Besides, you just want everyone to think you are, and I won't give you the satisfaction of being fooled."

A little too close to the truth there, but Lana and Kal-El had that in common: they spoke the truth no matter how hard it was. "You're a pain, cheerleader," Lois sighed.

"I know I'm on the right track when you call me 'cheerleader'. Listen, Lois, if there's any further news, I'll call back, all right?"

"Sure. I'll keep my fingers crossed." With that and some farewells, they both hung up, and Lois massaged her temples wearily. _If anyone up there is listening, I've had my fill of funerals for the next five years. Just saying._

What Lois really wanted right then was a cigarette, but she didn't have any with her. She pulled on a robe and wandered out onto the balcony anyway, hoping the breeze would clear her head.

Metropolis sprawled around her, a sea of lights and sound. Even at this hour traffic moved regularly along the streets below, and Lois felt like the city was a heart, its driving beat pushing people along like blood through arteries. Here she was, above it all, looking down and wondering.

Lois gradually became aware that she wasn't alone, and turned to look. Kal-El hovered in mid-air, watching her, and he smiled when she turned toward him. "Good evening, Ms. Lane."

_Yes_. Here was the perfect distraction, the perfect reminder that even though time marched on relentlessly, they could grab a few moments to savor along the way. Moments that made everything else worthwhile.

She could give him the news later. Lois smirked at her husband, and replied, "Well good evening, Superman. Fancy meeting you here." With the arch of her brow and the bright gleam in his eyes, Lois figured the witty banter wouldn't last more than five minutes. There _was_ an exceedingly comfy guest bedroom right behind her and Kristin slept like a brick….

…

"Shouldn't he be separated from the bitch?" Luthor asked. He and Mercy were looking into the large enclosure that currently housed Project Uplift and its mother, a female German Shepherd. She had no official code name, referred to as 'the dam' on all paperwork, but Lex had heard some of the staff call her Lady.

"I don't recommend it," Mercy replied. Project Uplift, also known as Krypto, was a fast-growing puppy, currently racing around the outdoor section of the dogs' enclosure. His white coat shone in the sun, and he periodically tried to engage his mother in a game, but she was lying in the shade and kept her eyes closed even when he tugged on her ears.

"Why not?" Lex asked.

He could almost _hear _Mercy switching into scientific-reporting mode. "Right now she serves as a modulator of his behavior. She is gentle and tractable, and he follows her example. If he won't come inside, we can get him in by calling her. He's already learned that if he doesn't follow her promptly, we'll separate them, and he doesn't like that."

"Doesn't like it?" Lex narrowed his eyes at that phrasing. "He's a _dog_."

"When we separate them, he whines and claws at the barrier," Mercy replied. "Which is why the door between kennel A and kennel B was replaced with reinforced steel. He never broke through the wooden barrier, but he managed to score it deeply. In any case, we need controls on him that don't rely on physical manipulation or restraint. The day will come when we can no longer handle him safely."

Lex scoffs. "If he's smart enough to learn that we'll separate him from his mother if he doesn't follow her inside when we call him, he's smart enough to learn that we'll kryptonite him if he tries to attack."

"That's the problem. He's _too_ smart." Mercy nodded toward the dog, who was looking at them with his ears pricked. His blue eyes were focused on Lex, and there seemed to be a glimmer of intelligence there beyond the mere power of suggestion. "He's shown that he understands at least thirty words based on his reactions to what the handlers say around him. He certainly understands tone."

Mercy half-turned away from the puppy and lowered her voice. "Lex, we don't know how much the gene splicing boosted his intelligence. I wouldn't put it past him to deliberately plan an attack, and when he's fully grown he could do a lot of damage before we stopped him."

It was the way she spoke as much as the words that convinced him. Mercy was not superstitious in the least. If she behaved as if the pup were almost as intelligent as a human, well … she'd seen more of the data than Lex had, and she'd observed Project Uplift more often, too. "All right. I'll leave you in charge of developing those protocols, then."

"I already have some ideas—" Mercy began, and then her phone beeped a single loud tone. That was the emergency security alert, and she answered it immediately with the speakerphone function. "What is it?"

"Ma'am, Project Scion is out of his designated zone," said one of the guards.

She and Lex shared a look of mingled surprise and unease. So far Scion had been extremely docile, and showed no signs of the powers he should have had. But the possibility was there, and they both knew it. "Where is he?" Mercy asked.

"Unknown, ma'am. He was discovered missing at mealtime."

"Scan for him, then. Do _not_ engage. I'll handle this myself," Mercy said. She broke into a trot, heading for the wing where Scion was housed. Lex kept pace with her. Scion responded well to both of them, and he was curious to see what this particular project was up to.

Later on, footage from the security cameras would reconstruct the sequence of events. Project Scion had walked calmly up one of the corridors, stopping at a door marked 'Laboratory 3'. He reached up for the door handle, but it was locked. At that same moment, a guard turned the corner and saw him. "Beat it, kid," the man said. Not every guard on the premises was familiar with every project, and this one probably mistook Scion for an employee's child—a practice Lex frowned on, but in this remote location there _were_ a couple of children who could not yet be separated from their parents, and some talent was worth making sacrifices.

Project Scion turned toward him for a moment, then ignored him, trying the door again. The guard approached. "Didn't you hear me? That's off limits. Now scram." When Scion didn't react, the man grabbed his shoulder and turned him roughly around. "I said get lost, kid."

That was the moment when Lex and Mercy both turned the corner. Scion looked at the man's hand on his shoulder, then up at him, tilting his head in a manner more puzzled than threatened. Before Mercy could call a warning, before the guard saw his immediate supervisor and his ultimate boss arriving, the guard shoved the boy. "What's the matter with you? Move it!"

Scion took a staggering step back, caught himself, and then reached out. He grabbed the guard's belt at the buckle in one hand, and with a casual movement flung the man ten feet down the hallway.

Lex stopped where he was. Part-human, part-Kryptonian, created with Kryptonian cloning technology and grown in a birthing matrix, Scion was unlike anything else walking the planet, a complete cipher in some ways. One that had just demonstrated _super-strength_. How long had he had it? Was it brought on by a sense of threat, perhaps triggered by a spike in the boy's adrenaline? And what _other_ powers were brewing in the exotic mix of Scion's DNA?

While Lex hesitated, Mercy approached, asking, "Are you hurt?" Not the guard, though. The boy, and she spoke in Kryptonese.

He turned toward them then, his gaze puzzled. Scion's black hair fell into a familiar curly forelock, but he was still too young to tell which of his forebears his features would resemble. "I am not," he replied to Mercy. His voice was level and calm; he rarely showed any temper, despite his youth. "Why did that man push me?"

"Because there are chemicals in that room which can be harmful," Lex supplied, moving forward. "It is his duty to prevent entrance by those who are not experienced in working with such chemicals. However, he was overzealous in that duty."

Mercy turned toward the stunned guard, who had gotten up carefully. Switching to English, she said, "That was unnecessary. Report to your shift lead for a replacement; you're on suspension without pay for three days."

Lex was watching Scion, and thought he saw a glimmer of comprehension on the boy's face. He shouldn't have been able to understand English, but as with the dog, it wouldn't do to underestimate him. Scion had been brought up speaking strictly Kryptonese, mostly through the teaching crystals Lex had copied from Superman's Fortress so long ago. His version of the Jor-El AI was incomplete, not really a true AI as much as a series of recordings—about as intelligent as a voice-activated telephone system, really. But it sufficed to give the boy the proper accent, and that was all Lex needed. Well, nearly all.

There were a couple of sounds in the Kryptonian language that humans found difficult to reproduce, and as Lex had learned several years ago in Nevada, a non-native speaker of the language could not access the most crucial information in the crystals without extensive preparation. Only a blood-relative of the El family, and one who spoke Kryptonese as fluently as a native—what would take decades of study for anyone brought up speaking a human tongue—could unlock the data on the deadliest and most subtle weapons of twenty-eight galaxies.

Luthor thirsted for that knowledge as he had few other things in life. What he'd learned so far had increased his fortunes and given him dozens of avenues of research to pursue, any one of which could have put him in his rightful place in the world. But the fact that _some_ knowledge was still hidden burned in his mind, like an itch he couldn't scratch. Maddening.

And Scion would get all of that secret wisdom for him. Lex came out of his reverie as Mercy was telling the boy that if he was bored, she would show him around the areas of the facility that were safe. At Scion's assent, Lex fell in with them both, favoring the boy with a rare smile. Luthor was his maker, not his father, but he couldn't help feeling a touch of almost-paternal pride now and then.


	28. Unforseen Transitions

**No big news this week, but I did want to add a note: a lot of people have been asking on and off if we're sawing certain characters for a reason. Say, like mentioning Spoiler and the Wonders and Batclan. Guys, when have you known us NOT to have a purpose for what we're showing? ;) We aren't the Evil Cliffie Princesses [**htbthomas** will forever be Queen] for nothing. Rest assured, you'll see where we're going as the fic progresses. :D**

* * *

><p>Kala was being distant, and Dustin didn't know why. Honestly he was a little afraid to ask. Was it something he'd said or done while they were in Smallville? Or was it whatever was going on with the twins? He knew <em>something<em> was up, but he'd known Jason and Kala long enough to know that some things were just between them. Sometimes they had whole conversations comprised of looks and raised eyebrows, with just a handful of words thrown in so the casual observer wouldn't think they were actually psychic.

Dustin could wish that his best friend or his girlfriend would let him in on whatever it was, but he knew better. His grandfather had had a saying about wishing for things that seemed to apply here. The original phrasing was saltier, though Dustin always thought of it in the terms Granther employed when kids might be listening. 'Wish in one hand, crap in the other, 'n see which one fills up first.' Crude, true, but to Dustin it meant that realities outweighed wishful thinking. And the reality was that Jason and Kala had shared a lot of things, starting with a _womb_, that they never extended to anyone else. That was just part of life with them.

Besides, he did trust in one thing. If whatever was going on would affect him, they'd _both_ tell him. Right now it simply wasn't his business, and he saw no need to pry.

What did need prying into, though, was the way Kala looked at him. The whole trip back to Metropolis, there'd been a sadness in her eyes whenever he met her gaze, quickly hidden behind false cheer. Dustin knew it was false, too, but he let it go. Kala was switching between clinging to him fiercely and staring at him as if they were on two icebergs drifting apart. Something had to be done about that.

But the band was taking up all her time. Dustin had been with them throughout the process of getting together their 'label packages', making copies of the demo CD, getting Kala's uncle-by-newsprint Jimmy Olsen to take professional photos of the band, choosing which news clippings to include. One night Kala, Sebast, and Morgan had argued until dawn over how to word a cover letter. It was all a lot of work, just like the constant practice and all the shows they'd been doing. Dustin privately swore that the next time someone back home wanted to run away and be a singer, he'd tell them it was more trouble than being a mechanic, for sure.

Now that an actual label rep was talking to them, they were in overdrive, and it felt like Dustin never saw Kala sitting still unless she was asleep. She even ate on the run, scarfing whatever she could while trying to make it to this appointment or that one. He felt a little lonely, even though she was staying over at the rental house more often than at her parents' apartment, and that meant he got to sleep beside her most nights. Strange to feel lonely while she was cuddled up to him, gradually stealing the blankets and taking over his half of the bed. But then, Kala acted lonely, too, even though he was there for her through all of it, including the band stuff that he didn't completely understand.

It didn't help that Dustin wasn't sleeping too well. He'd thought he might be able to adjust to Metropolis this time around. After all, he wasn't a kid anymore. Lots of people lived comfortably in the big city despite the noise and traffic, but he found out the hard way that he just couldn't. Ear plugs cut down on the nighttime noise, and then it was the light that bothered him. It was never fully dark in Metropolis, not the way Dustin was used to darkness, with the stars wheeling overhead in all their cold, untouchable beauty. He borrowed Kala's sleep mask to much teasing from the other boys, but not even that worked.

Dustin suspected that he was just a little too in tune with his environment. The same sense that told him a deer was approaching when he was sitting in a tree stand in the chill morning air of a Kansas autumn, without any sight or sound he was conscious of, was probably playing havoc with him now. Metropolis was _alive_ and awake at all hours, throbbing with the driving beat of its heart: its people. And he felt that life flowing around him, chaotic and constant, every moment he was in the city.

It didn't bother Kala. As near as he could tell, she loved it; she swam in it like she was a trout and the mad whirl of city life was her stream. Sure, she enjoyed Smallville, but this was her element.

And it wasn't his.

Everything came to a head one night when he just couldn't sleep, and tried to get out of bed. Sometimes a glass of milk or a few minutes of reading would help. This time, Kala clung to him stubbornly. "Babe, I hafta get up," Dustin whispered, trying to ease her arm off his shoulder.

"Nooooo," Kala whimpered, twining her leg around him in protest. "Don' lea' me yet."

He paused, one hand on her knee; unwrapping Kala when she was in a cuddly mood was a bit like wrestling an octopus. _Yet?_ Dustin stopped trying to wiggle free and nudged Kala awake instead. She looked at him bleary-eyed and adorable, the literal girl of his dreams. "Hey, Kal. What's up?" he asked, trying for gentle humor. "Did you dream you were the Kraken or something?"

"What if I'm the Kraken dreaming I'm a rock star?" she mumbled back, and snuggled in to his side.

Dustin stroked her hair softly. "Kala."

"Dustin." Her eyes were already closing again.

"When I tried to get up, you told me not to leave you yet."

She blinked again, and those hazel eyes were wide awake—and wary. "Well, I _don't_ want you to leave me," she whispered.

"I don't want to leave you, either," he replied, and solemnly rubbed his nose against hers. His mother had called those 'Eskimo kisses', and it was one of his favorite ways to remind Kala that he loved her.

That was it; Kala drew in a hitching breath, and squeezed him tight. "But you will," she mumbled. "You're not happy here. I can _tell_, Dustin. You can't even get a full night's sleep."

It was true, no sense in denying it. "Well, what's that plaque in your mom's office say? 'Sleep is for the weak.' Maybe I'll buy one for myself." That was hardly a solution, just his attempt to delay the inevitable.

Kala sat up slowly, swiping at her eyes in a vain attempt to hide tears. "I love you, Dustin. You've been a great friend ever since we were just kids, and you're the best guy I've ever dated. I really, _really_ love you."

"I really, really love _you_, Kala." Dustin took her hands as he sat up, and kissed the backs of her knuckles. "You've been a bossy annoying little brat since we were kids, and you're still the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Even when your idea of fashion was matching hair ribbons."

She laughed, and tugged him close for a kiss that tasted faintly of salt. "This _sucks_. I want to be with you, but I love you too much to make you stay here and be unhappy. It'd be like … like keeping a horse in an apartment. No room for you to be yourself. And the long-distance thing sucks even worse."

Dustin only nodded. He knew about the deal she'd made with her father. If Kala couldn't get her band signed in two years of trying, she had agreed go back to college and pursue an alternate career. Something like that might've led her to a job where she could end up living within commuting distance of Smallville. But if the audition next week went well, she was going to be a full-time singer, and that meant hours in the recording studio plus months on the road.

All he said aloud was, "I always knew you weren't going to be a mechanic's wife in Smallville, Kala."

Her lip trembled, and she closed her eyes. "For you, I…" she began, her voice breaking.

He reached to cup her cheek, making her look at him again. "No, Kala. You love me too much to make me live in the city, and I love you too much to make you do that. You were meant for so much more than what I can give you. This is what you've always dreamed of, Kal, and someday everyone's gonna know your name."

Kala could only look at him pleadingly as Dustin brushed the tears from her cheeks. "It's like … you're a mermaid, Kala, and I'm just some guy on a ship who happened to see you and fall in love. I'm so lucky you love me back, 'cause you're like something out of a fairytale to me."

"You are so much more than 'just some guy'," Kala insisted vehemently.

He let that pass with a faint smile. "But as much as we love each other, you belong to the ocean and I belong to the land. I can't live in your world without drowning. And I can't ask you to give up your fins and be something you're not."

She sighed heavily, trailing her hand over his bare chest in aimless patterns. "That last morning in Smallville? When I tried to wake you up, I told you we were going home. And you said you _were_ home. You don't want me to settle for anything less than my dream—well, I don't want to make you live somewhere you'll never feel like you're at home. I love you too much to make you unhappy."

So _that_ was what had been bothering her. Dustin looked at Kala steadily. "I'll always love you. You know that, Kal. But we both know what's going on here."

Her voice was a tiny whisper, none of the rich bold tones that he knew were going to bring her fame and fortune in the music industry. "We're not gonna be able to stay together. For good, this time."

"No, we're not," he admitted. And this was the most painful thing Dustin had ever done. Yet there was a weird kind of rightness to it. Kala had been his first crush, given him his first kiss, and been his first lover. It was only fitting that she was going to be the first one to break his heart, too. At their first breakup, they had both drifted apart, staying close friends with that flirty edge that had been part of their relationship ever since she kissed him. But this time around, they'd been together longer, pretty much lived together, and they were both older and wiser.

This time, the unfairness of it was killing him. Dustin still couldn't see himself living like a gypsy half the year, and he never could see Kala settling down in Smallville. The mermaid analogy had worked for her, but he also thought that asking her to move there was like planting a wild rose in too small of a pot. She'd get strangled by her own spreading roots, grow pallid and weak, and never be more than a shadow of what she should've been.

…

Lois was meeting Lana at the airport, and she wasn't quite sure what to expect. Richard and Theo were still down in Fort Lauderdale, settling things at the house. After two days with no change, both men had finally accepted the inevitable and agreed to take Sylvia off life support. She had passed peacefully within the hour. As it turned out, Sylvia had been an organ donor, and Lois had bitten her lip at Lana's description of Theo's hand shaking as he signed off on the proper forms. Three people were getting another chance at life, and one was going to be able to see, thanks to Sylvia.

Finding out about that ultimate generosity made Lois wish she could've gotten along better with the older woman, but their relationship had been adversarial from their first meeting—when Perry's sister-in-law assumed he was _sleeping with_ the sixteen-year-old girl he'd allowed to move in—and the animosity had been set in stone when one of her yapping hell-beasts tried to nip Jason. Lois suffered no threats to her children … and Sylvia would hear no wrong spoken of her 'pupkins'. That breach hadn't been healed by Lana's best efforts over the years, and probably never would've been even if Sylvia had lived to be a hundred.

Lois hadn't gone to the memorial service over the weekend, feeling like she would've been out of place. Perry did, which gave Lois an excuse to stay in Metropolis and babysit the paper, and Kristin had gone with Perry. The Chief was still in Florida catching up with his brother, but Kristin was coming home with her mom in time for school on Monday morning.

Idly browsing the newspaper stand—and contemplating putting a stack of _Daily Planet_ issues into the dispenser for the _Daily Star_—Lois heard their flight called, and turned toward the gate. After a few minutes she saw Lana, though at first she didn't recognize the redhead. That harassed expression certainly wasn't at home on Lana's face, and she pulled her carry-on luggage like it had insulted her.

Kristin saw Lois, and reached up to wave. Normally she would've been jumping up to be seen above other people, but she was probably still subdued from the funeral. Lois waved back, and then they met with hugs and kisses on the cheek … and rumblings of discontent from the bag over Lana's shoulder. "Let's get this over with," Lana sighed, hitching the bag a little higher.

Meanwhile Lois was staring at the bag, which had mesh sides—and had just growled at her. "Red, _what_ is that?"

"Sergeant and Pepper are gonna come live with us now," Kristin supplied quietly. Lois looked over at Lana with stark horror.

"Sylvia left them to me," Lana said, with a thin smile. "Along with her _entire_ collection of Yorkie memorabilia. Do you know she had two dozen Yorkie-embroidered tea towels in the hall closet that had never been used?"

Pressing a hand over her mouth, Lois just barely managed not to laugh. Of all the things Sylvia could've done…. "Oh my God, Lana, I'm so sorry," she said, and one of the dogs yapped at the sound of her voice.

That was it, Lois snickered and spluttered laughter, with Kristin looking on confused and Lana just giving a long-suffering sigh. "Your fault," Lois finally wheezed. "You and the damn cheddar."

Lana scowled; she had dealt with the terriers' misbehavior by loading her pockets with tiny cubes of cheese. If they charged her or Kristin, she tossed cheese over their shoulders to distract them. She didn't suffer any threat to her child, either, she just had different ways of dealing with it, given time to prepare.

It had the unintended side effect of making both dogs follow Lana around whenever she visited the Whites, which was probably why Sylvia had left them to her. "I only ever wanted one dog. Now I have _four_. And two of them are completely untrained. Sylvia had them both _paper-trained_. They're five years old, Lois!"

"So that's why you wanted me to drop Cissa and Dusty at my sister's place," Lois said. "Planning to introduce them on neutral ground? And maybe fob the terrierists off on Luce while you're at it?"

"I wish. But I wouldn't give these two to someone I actually _like_," Lana grumbled.

"Why isn't Theo keeping them?" Lois asked as they walked toward the parking area. Lana never checked bags; any significant luggage would be coming home on Richard's plane, or sent via FedEx.

Lana huffed, scowling. "He doesn't want them, never liked them, and best of all, _he's allergic to them_. That's part of the reason he always spent so much time in the garage. Besides, Sylvia actually put it in her will that they're to go to me, since I'm the only person in the family who has a strong bond with them."

"Ah, the bond of cheddar," Lois said.

That didn't mollify Lana. "Strong bond my _foot_. They think I'm a cheese dispenser! Pepper already tried to bite me when I put her in the carrier bag."

Lois cast a glance at the bag. She couldn't see the inside very well through the mesh, but easily made out a flash of white teeth and a staring eye. "Maybe we can pour gravy on them and get Marny to eat them for you."

The attempt at joking earned her an unhappy look. "Don't tempt me."

Kristin promptly fell asleep on the ride over to the Troupes, proving yet again why her nickname was Dormouse. To break the moody silence Lois fell back on her journalistic instincts. "So what's the situation with Theo? Perry said something about him coming up here?"

"He's going to move to Metropolis, yes. They're already talking about condos. The boys are getting the house in Fort Lauderdale in order to put it on the market, but we can probably get an agent to handle the sale. I expect Theo will be living here by the end of next week."

"_Wow_," Lois said. Theo and Sylvia had lived in Florida for at least the last twenty years; such an abrupt move sounded unwise.

"He needs a change of scenery, and Richard wants him nearby," Lana said.

"Yeah, I get that," Lois replied. In a way it reminded her of her own breakup with Richard. Neither of them could stand to live in the house they'd shared, constantly recalling what they'd lost. Which was why Lucy and Ron had taken over the payments and moved in. Now the Riverside house had a host of memories from family holidays over the years, and both of them were comfortable there.

Of course Theo saw Sylvia in every room of their home; she had imprinted her personality into every square inch of the place. Perhaps that might have become comforting, given time, but Theo had no other family in the South. It was better for him to come up to Metropolis where he could be around his son and brother and their families. Being alone wouldn't help him.

Speaking of Sylvia's personality imprinted everywhere…. "What's the situation on the Yorkie stuff?" Lois asked.

Lana sighed again. "I just brought the essentials. All their other stuff is being shipped to the house. The sheer amount of things she had for these two is ridiculous. Matching seasonal leashes and collars, t-shirts, bandannas, sweaters, raincoats, booties, special bowls for the holidays, and the box of their toys alone weighs twelve pounds. They have special brands of shampoo and conditioner and detangler, and they own more hairbrushes than I do. Oh, and I almost forgot the doggy colognes with names like CK-9 and Pucci and Arfmani. _Arf_mani, Lois. That's not even including the nail polish for Pepper."

Out of all of it, the last was the most incredulous. "_Nail polish_? For dogs?"

Nodding, Lana stared straight ahead out the window. "There's a nail polish to match every color of hair ribbon. All I could think was, 'Dogs are colorblind'. And any of the dogs I grew up with would rather roll in _roadkill_ than smell like _Arfmani_."

Lois snorted. Her own beagles had one collar and leash each—well, all right, they both had Christmas collars, but that was different. And somewhere in the back of a closet were the Halloween costumes the twins had bought for Bagel. But none of that approached the level of indulgence Sylvia bestowed on her Yorkies. "How much of it have you already ditched?"

"Just the cologne, the nail polish, and the ribbons. As soon as I can get an appointment with a groomer, I'm going to have them both put into a puppy cut—reasonably short all over. No way am I going to put in the effort to deal with the long coats, so I won't need the ribbons. And shorter fur means I might get some use out of the sweaters, too, so I'll keep those." Lana shook her head slowly.

"You'll figure it out," Lois said. "If anyone can turn those two mutts from Hell into model citizens, it's you. You certainly trained Richard well enough."

That won her a laugh. "Richard was already partly trained, though. And Lois?"

"Yeah?"

Lana reached over and took Lois' hand that was resting on the gearshift, squeezing it lightly. "Thank you for listening to my whining."

Lois gave her a fond smile. They both knew she was focusing on the dogs and the problems they presented to distract herself from the grief Richard and Theo had to be experiencing. And also from the fact that none of them were getting any younger. Martin and Annette Lang acted like they would live forever, but Lois knew that Lana worried about them both. She'd heard about an incident or two of forgetfulness—simple things like having to get a ride to church because they couldn't find the car keys—which made Lana nervous. Luckily there were cousins and family in Smallville to keep an eye out on both of them.

And even more luckily, Lana had Lois to keep her mind off such things. "So you're redoing the penthouse in black and tan Yorkie memorabilia?"

The look Lana cut her was incredibly skeptical. "Most of _that_ is going to a Yorkie rescue down in Florida. They're going to auction it off and use the proceeds to save more dogs. I did save a couple of items, and Theo is keeping a few things to remember Sylvia by. So is Richard, but I'm afraid he's serious about wanting to hang the portrait of Muffin and Biscuit in our living room."

At that mental image—Sylvia's previous pair of terriers, painted on black velvet with ribbons in their hair and beady-eyed expressions—Lois laughed loud enough to wake Kristin up.

…

The Red Hood adjusted to chaos easily; it was part of his world, and he had been its agent more than once. Anyone who mistook him for a mere seed of disorder, however, had failed to see the bigger picture. He had been trained by some of the best martial artists in the world, and discipline of mind and body was part of that.

He was back in Gotham City now, lying low. Nightwing had spotted him once, but he'd ditched Dickie-bird and stayed in for a few nights, waiting to see if the rest of the Bats came hunting. The only one actively hunting him was Spoiler, and he couldn't blame her. Jay had put her boyfriend in the hospital, and he might do it again if he had to look at that sanctimonious I'm-the-best-Robin face one more time, but he bore _her_ no ill-will. The blonde girl had been a Robin, too, and Daddy Bats had booted her out. She didn't go home and cry about it, though. She put her old Spoiler uniform back on and got right back out there, fighting with Oracle's crew. Pretty much told Batman where he could shove it. Jay admired moxie like that.

Of course, if Spoiler actually _found_ him, he'd knock her out and drop her on the Clock Tower doorstep. She was nowhere near the fighter he was, and he knew he could take her if he had to. But he wasn't shopping for a sidekick, and he didn't want her trying to bring him down when he was in the middle of something important, so Jay just avoided her.

At the moment he was just putting out feelers, trying to figure out the lie of the land. Gotham's greasy underbelly was still rumbling from the havoc he'd wreaked on it, but things were getting back to normal. As normal as it could be, anyway. Gangs, drugs, guns, and dirty money everywhere. Black Mask was sitting in jail, but he had his agents out there, and Jay knew if one of those found out he was in town, he'd have a hefty price on his head.

It wouldn't be the first time, and probably not the last, either. Mask was too goddamned cheap to hire the kind of talent it would take to put down Red Hood. Besides, with his caliber of training, Jay felt like he only had to worry about the League of Shadows. And he figured that no matter how pissed Ra's al Ghul was, he wouldn't accept anyone else's fee to kill him. If the old man wanted revenge for that unauthorized swim in his freakin' fountain of youth, he'd take it himself.

There were a couple of mercenaries and independent assassins-for-hire who were good enough to give him a headache, but Jay thought he'd see them coming a mile away. And Mask, flinty bastard that he was, would give him plenty of warning by hiring second-stringers first.

No, his primary concerns wore bats on their chests. Including the new Batgirl, whom Jay had spotted once by pure luck. _That_ one moved like a true ninja, and Jay had a lot of money out there waiting for any kind of information on her. So he kept his head down, built things up slowly, working on reestablishing himself. This time around he wasn't going to go toe-to-toe with Bruce and his little nesting dolls. No, the plan now was to be the Batman Gotham deserved. Forget taking control of the gangs, just hit 'em hard enough to keep them cowed and running scared. Kill the ones that rose above the rest in competence or cruelty. Crime couldn't be stopped, but it could be throttled down to a bare minimum. He had to vary his methodology too, make it less obvious that he was an ex-Robin, if he wanted to keep working, so he chose the cautious approach.

And that led to his errand tonight. No matter how much he might try to keep his head down, there were some things Jay couldn't ignore. In the process of gathering information, he'd stumbled across a 'hotel' that charged exorbitant rates in a seedy neighborhood—hourly rates, at that. Didn't take long to figure out that the rooms in the hotel came with some very exotic amenities.

It always came down to kids. Selling drugs to kids, or selling kids themselves. Either one would earn Jay's wrath, and he couldn't hold back. When he heard a whisper that the 'hotel' catered to those who liked their meat very young and tender, he decided to investigate.

Only took a day to decide the place was going down. How could Bruce and company let something like this slide under their noses? (Well, every nutjob with a mask capering around on the rooftops begging for Bat-tention didn't help.) And if they found out, how the fuck could they stand _not_ to slice and dice the bastards running it? He sure didn't know, but one thing was sure. None of the fuckers were gonna get out alive. Jay stocked up on ammo, checked blueprints for access points and escape routes, then headed in.

And found that someone else had been there first. The back-door guard was dead behind his desk with a slashed throat, two more in the hallway. Jay froze, every sense on alert. _Someone else was in his town, doing his job._ Hell no, Daddy Bats and his morals wouldn't let anyone play vigilante-killer in Gotham. This had to be new.

Or it was someone taking out the competition. He could be walking into a fight. Jay shrugged; the safety was already off his gun, and his only concession to danger was to move more stealthily and cautiously.

That ended when he got to the basement. He'd come in early, before the place was officially open—one former employee had admitted, after having a couple fingers broken, that the merchandise was locked up in the basement during the day and only let out just before guests started arriving. So whoever was shooting down there was running the risk of hurting the kids, and they had suffered enough already.

Jay burst in with guns blazing, taking out two assholes who were spraying lead all over the place. He had a moment to think scornfully that no one bothered to _practice_ with fully automatic weapons anymore, just assumed they were point-and-click, which was why half their rounds were going into the ceiling as the force of recoil pulled the guns upward.

What he was looking for was the opposition, and he didn't see it. The guys standing between him and a frightened huddle of children were concentrating their fire on a bank of steel lockers, and Jay figured anyone who'd tried to hide in there was thoroughly perforated by now. So he kept his attention on the men shooting at him, and mowed them down.

The air rang with echoes when he lowered his weapons. "It's all right, kids, you're getting out of here," he said. And then the hair on his neck stood up, every sense screaming that he wasn't alone.

Intuition deeper than knowledge warned against trying to whirl on the adversary, and Jay stood with both guns held loosely at his side. He felt a presence behind him, and then a careful touch just beneath his helmet, where the reinforced collar of his jacket had a tiny gap for flexibility.

That was too much to bear, and he turned with the blinding speed he'd learned over the last four years. To Jay's shock, he was countered, the gun he'd been raising swept out of his hand, and the other smacked down before he lifted it. _Fucking hell_, no one got the drop on him like that!

Falling back, he grabbed for the knife, but had a sword-tip at his throat even as his fingers closed on the blade, and husky feminine laughter rang in his ears. He'd only known one woman who was both faster than he was, and carried a sword with authority. For a second Jay though, _Talia?!_

But no, Talia never did the mask thing, and the skin beneath the mask was too pale. Not to mention the long hair was pure white. Jay's memory caught up a second later, matching the uniform to the identity—well, the father's identity. "Ravager," he said, calmer than he felt. Too late he remembered that Deathstroke had some kind of psychic sense that told him what opponents were about to do. Maybe his daughter had it too, and that was how she got him.

"Red Hood," she replied, and gave him a flash of white teeth in savage amusement. "I really thought about taking your head to Black Mask for the bounty."

Jay rolled his shoulders, acting like he was trying to relieve tension, but really just trying to get her used to him moving. "Oh yeah? The money's that good, to tempt a Titan?"

"Forget the Titans. Too much drama in that club," Rose said dismissively.

So she was on her own, or pretending to be. Thinking about going for hire like her father, maybe? Killing people who needed killing, too. Jay knew how the guards' throats had been slashed, looking at the crimson stains on her blade. And trespassing on Bat-turf, not that she seemed to give a damn. "What stopped you?"

She hiked one shoulder. "You came here for the kids. Same reason I did. So maybe I can let you live."

Jay chuckled, tipping his head forward as he did. "Well that's really generous of you, Ravager. I'll be sure to leave a reference on your mercenary file."

He knew that would piss her off, and he'd been making subtle little moves the whole time. The next thing Rose knew, he'd grabbed her sword by the blade with his armored glove, and had his _kriss_ up to her throat. "Uh-uh, don't reach for the other sword, you're already too late," Jay informed her, and watched the smile slide off her lips, replaced by a bitter, angry expression.

Rose didn't back down, though, just glared at him from behind the mask. Jay grinned evilly. "Well, since you came here for the kids, I guess maybe I can let you live."

At that moment, when her mouth was twisting in a sneer, they both heard sirens outside. GCPD, late as always, but they damn sure couldn't get caught in the middle of a pile of bodies. "Wanna take this conversation elsewhere, or just wait 'til we get busted?" Rose said, stepping smoothly back from the knife in the instant that Jay was distracted by the sirens.

He smirked beneath his helmet. "Your place or mine?"

She made a scoffing noise. "Last I checked, neither of us is even supposed to be in this town. But if you wanna piece of the assholes who were sending them the kids, you'll come find me." And with that Ravager was gone, and Jay took his own exit route, sparing a glance at the huddled children.

At least now they were safe; Gordon's cops were solid. Jay knew he was going to track down Rose to figure out whoever had sold these kids, and put a stop to it.

Permanently.


	29. Hints, Complications, and Conclusions

**Okay, guys, next week is the first of the two-week hiatus. We're heading to the mountains of North Carolina again aka The Girls Are Recharging. Plenty of discussion gonna happen up there because we've got some pretty awesome things planned for the future of this guy; we just need to make some serious decisions about things and how they come about. We just have to get there. **

**Especially since one of those things if now good to go. *winks at saavikam77* Speaking of which, have I told you how much I'm looking forward to that, lady? *smishes***

* * *

><p>"Man, it sucks that Dustin and Kala broke up," Ned sighed. He and Robb were on the couch with their feet up on the coffee table, polishing off the last few slices of pizza.<p>

"Don't say that," Morgan snapped.

"Dude, he packed up everything and went home when his mom went in the hospital," Robb said. "Complete with tearful goodbye at the airport."

Morgan rolled his eyes and sat up a little straighter in his chair. Dustin's mom was having fairly minor surgery to remove a cyst, but it was an overnight hospital stay and he wanted to be there. They could all understand that. But the packing, and the resignation letter at his job, and the fact that he'd been ready to give them his last paycheck to cover his portion of the rent, all pointed to a more permanent change. Morgan had sensed it coming for a few days, and knew that the hospital thing was just the catalyst.

Still, he needed to set these clueless boys straight. "Okay, one, it wasn't 'goodbye', it was 'see you later'. If she gets a chance to go to Smallville or if he can come out here, it'll be back on."

Ned scoffed. "Whatever. Nobody cries that much if they're not breaking up. I think _he_ even cried a little too."

"I'd cry if I was breaking up with Kala," Robb mused.

"Man, I'd cry if you were _dating_ Kala," Ned shot back. Robb scowled and punched his shoulder, while Ned just snickered.

"_Guys_." Morgan sighed, wondering why he even bothered. "Yeah, they probably won't get back together. That ship has sailed. But don't tell _Kala_ that, all right? She's messed up enough as it is."

"Messed up enough that Sebast cleaned out his bank account and took her to that fancy little mod hotel downtown," Robb muttered. He stared at his pizza crust like it had offended him.

Ned sipped soda. "Yeah, what's up with that, anyway? We're supposed to get a signing bonus but that isn't for sure, and he just blew _all_ his money. I mean, if he wasn't gay I'd think he was trying to score a rebound."

Robb raised his hand as if he were still in school, asking permission to speak. "Okay, since it's just us, how sure are we about that? I mean, Sebast doesn't _act_ gay."

Almost choking on his drink, Ned groaned. "You're from California! Don't you have enough gay people around to know they're not all the same?!"

"Yeah but most of them sound alike and act alike and I always thought a straight chick and her gay friend would be like, painting each other's nails and stuff. The way Sebast is, he reminds me more of some Latino gangsters." Robb glared defensively at Ned, who rolled his eyes. "Hell, Morgan, it's not an insult, but you act more like the gay guys I know than he does."

Morgan rubbed at his temples. "Robb. I'm _metro_. You have to have seen that before, right? It means I take better care of myself and my looks than the average straight schlub—which, _please _wash that shirt, seriously, you're driving me crazy with that freaking ketchup stain from yesterday. I'm no less straight for knowing how to match clothes and having had a manicure.

"Meanwhile, Sebast is not femme at all. He's very, _very_ butch. He just happens to like guys, and trust me, _I know_. Good thing I'm secure in myself or I'd be weirded out by knowing he'd seriously hit on me if he didn't have to work with me on a professional level."

Both of the others stared at him at that admission. They'd overheard some of the joking around, but that wasn't uncommon. Knowing that Sebast might've made a serious play for Morgan, someone they both knew was straight and whose attractiveness with female fans they highly envied—well, that boggled their minds.

Morgan continued, "As for Kala and Sebast, they're _best friends_. And Sebast was the one who called Dustin in the first place, when he came out and met up with us on the Gothapalooza tour. He probably feels guilty. And Kala hasn't been been talking, too weepy all week. Have you ever known Kala to go that long without a smile? Don't know about you guys, but I miss it, too. I probably would have done the same thing in his position."

…

This was it. The final decision. Stephanie Brown needed to clear her head for this one, and it sure wasn't happening at home. So she put on her Spoiler uniform and headed for the heights of Gotham.

From way up here, the city looked like a model, all twinkling lights and tiny cars and people moving about down below. A fresh breeze lofted over the roofs, a relief from the more stagnant air down in the narrow streets below. Steph let it blow through her, thinking.

The plan was ingenious, perfect, the epitome of a mastermind move. She knew it wasn't hubris to think so; it wasn't _her_ plan, after all. It was his, Batman's, but he'd never had the guts to pull it off. Too ambitious. Or maybe, if it worked and he actually shut down _all_ of Gotham's gangs at once, he might be out of a job. Might find himself grabbing shoplifters and helping little old ladies cross the street.

Batman would never settle for that. Steph had already figured out that he was as bound to his calling as anyone could be. In a warped way, he _needed_ the crooks and the crazies. Just like they needed him. They validated each other.

And it was sick. The Bat and his chosen ones battled the rogues across the rooftops, and the rest of Gotham was caught between them. Steph was average in a way the rest weren't. No vast wealth and mysterious training, no unearthly acrobatic grace, no rage at injustice, no superior intellect, no childhood designed to shape her into a weapon. Just a girl, really, one who saw what her dad did as _wrong_ and wanted to stop it. And then started seeing how much was wrong with the world, how bad it could get, and wanted to stop that, too.

Not for justice or vengeance or anything similar. Just … to help people more like her than the rest of them. People who would never dream of donning a suit and mask and running to a parapet to leap ten feet across a deadly chasm. People who'd maybe never been good enough all their lives.

Well, today she was good enough. Everything was ready, every chess piece in place, and Steph only had to make the first move to touch it all off. But did she dare?

Implement one of Batman's contingency plans without his knowledge or help. Yeah, it was heavy. But she'd read the file over and over again. It couldn't fail.

Fine. It was time they all learned that dedication and heart really did count for something. Time to prove that you didn't have to wear a Bat-symbol to win one for the good guys. Steph took a deep breath, and made her choice, setting the plan in motion with a single untraceable text message.

Come what may.

…

When the AP ticker reel crossed her desk, Lois at first dismissed it as uninteresting after a brief glance—and then thought, _museum break-in_. That phrase had especial significance for her. She read the bare-bones article quickly, and got on the phone to the source. "Lois Lane, _Daily Planet_," she said in her smoothest, most professional voice, trying to quiet the hammering in her heart.

The curator on the other hand spoke with an accent, but his surprise was clear. "Lois _Lane_? The one who writes the Superman stories?"

"The very same," she replied, grinning. Some days it was an annoyance that people immediately thought of her in the context of her most iconic story. Most of the time, though, it was a source of pride. Kal-El was, after all, the most sought-after superhero, and he was _hers_. Her source, her story, her husband, father of her kids.

Still, she said, "I don't just cover superhero stories, though. Crime is my original beat, and I was looking for more information on your break-in." The curator sounded like an older man, flattered by the attention from a big-name newspaper from across the country, and Lois finessed the call to get every last detail.

Her usual interview style was more confrontational, but contrary to popular belief, Mad Dog Lane _did_ have more gears than 'full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes'. What she finally came away with was extremely disturbing, and she considering getting in touch with the League for follow-up.

But then, this particular matter was very _personal_ to the Super-family. Lois gnawed at her lip, wondering whether to just chase it down herself. Surely a little legwork would get her access to the police investigation of the break-in and robbery. While the cops out in Portland were very good, they weren't aware of the true motive for the crime, and knowing it focused the list of suspects. Given the situation, her instinct to protect her family was at its strongest, and Lois tended to get just as personal when the people she loved were in danger.

The last time she'd tried to wing it alone, however, people had gotten hurt. Lois herself had come close enough to dying to have felt her mother's arms around her. That experience—which she had talked about only a handful of times—had gone a long way to assuaging her grief over Ella's death. And it had given her a new appreciation for life. Every day was more precious, even the days where the most exciting thing she did was arrange the front page of the paper for maximum impact, when Lois knew how close she'd come to missing all of it.

She shivered despite the warmth of her office with its tall windows letting in the sun. So close to not seeing her children grow up, continually surprised by them in all their quirks and glories. So close to not making good on her reconciliation with Kal-El. A matter of moments, really. Lois had seen the medical records from Las Vegas Medical Center and knew her heart had been in v-fib for almost four minutes, during which time her blood hadn't been circulating. She remembered a choice, to go with her mother or to return to her body, which had been a cradle of pain for too long after that fateful day. Hell, she _still_ didn't have all of her strength back in her right arm, and couldn't reach as high with that hand. The upside was that she'd trained herself to use her left arm more, and being almost ambidextrous had its uses.

_There's a little boy who needs you, Lois._ Those words, spoken in Ella's voice, still echoed in Lois' mind. She was beginning to think Momma had meant Jason, with the way things had gone with him. If his powers really didn't come back—though Kal-El said he and Zatanna were working on a top-secret plan to restore them—he would need Lois more than ever.

After all, who else knew more about being a squishy human among superheroes than Lois Lane?

For his sake, she couldn't go haring off into something this potentially dangerous. With a sigh, Lois took out her cell phone and sent a text to a number very few people had. _Need to meet. May have found a rock collector for you._

The League's codes were sometimes obtuse, but Lois would never forget that one. A rock collector meant someone buying, trading, or stealing kryptonite.

At least by insisting on a face-to-face meeting, she'd keep her hand in the investigation. And Oracle knew better than to pick a fight with someone she'd once described—and Lois had heard about later with some pride—as 'the scariest woman in Metropolis'.

…

Sebast _did_ feel guilty, which is why he'd broken off weekend plans with a beautiful

boy to spend time with Kala. And spoil her rotten, which was what she needed most. It was breaking his bank, but so what? Kala was more important than money. Besides, with a little luck he would soon have enough money to quit worrying about things like rent and groceries.

He'd found the room on a website offering really good deals, and had lucked out. It was well-appointed and had a gorgeous view of the city lights, and they were snuggled down on the couch watching his Collector's Edition DVD set of the Chupacabra trilogy. The coffee table held a room service tray with the remains of their dinner: balsamic-glazed salmon for her, steak for him. Sebast had even sprung for dessert, though _that_ they'd brought with them. Few hotels carried his favorite ice cream, but he knew which stores did. And bad horror movies plus ice cream plus some sort of personal change equaled breakup therapy, for Kala at least.

On the big television screen, five determined-looking men filed into a cave entrance, all of them carrying weapons. For some reason only two of them had flashlights, and one was carrying a makeshift torch. "Guess we're just gonna see by the muzzle flash," Kala snorted, bringing a spoonful of Ben & Jerry's Late Night Snack to her mouth. The idea of fudge-covered potato chips was weird to Sebast, but then, Kala wrinkled her nose at his mango-coconut ice cream.

"Of course. Because you know, they fully expect the goddamn chupacabra to have his lair fully wired and lighted. Maybe they think it's dark because he just forgot to pay the electric bill." Sebast rolled his eyes, coaxing a smile from Kala. She was sitting with her feet curled under her and her hip pressed against his, while he leaned into the corner of the couch. If not for the plastic wrap around her hair, she would've been lying with her head on his shoulder.

"Really, Mexican horror films need a better class of monster hunter," Kala opined. She and Sebast had been watching the Chupacabra series since the first one, _Chupacabra: Night of the Goatsucker_, opened in theaters when they were both in high school. The movies ranged from mediocre to horrible, but somehow watching them had become their thing.

"What? You want to send them Buffy? Please. The goatsucker _likes_ blondes." Sebast chuckled. "Oh, wait, the Winchester brothers. Send them in. I bet he likes his meat salted, too."

Kala elbowed him. On screen, the guy with the torch was the first one grabbed, dropping the torch to the ground. Of course the two guys with flashlights turned and shone them at the spot where he'd been, revealing a moment's flash of the unfortunate victim gripping the cave wall, his mouth opened in a scream. Of the monster itself, they got only a glimpse of eyes and fangs before it dragged the man away. There was a gruesome crunching noise, and his screams died away in a gurgle.

The four survivors freaked out, predictably. Two ran toward the monster, shouting and brandishing weapons, but it dodged them. One ran blindly further into the cave, quickly getting lost in the dark, winding passages. And one ran toward the cave mouth, but since he didn't have a flashlight that was a guaranteed death—and a moment later he impaled himself on spiky stalagmites, making Kala and Sebast both wince despite having seen this particular scene many times.

"Urgh, I hate that one. Why they gotta show the one spike get him right in the crotch?" Sebast winced.

"Hey, skip past that part and then pause it," Kala said, looking carefully at his hair. "Yours looks pretty light. What about mine?"

He looked over at her, checking the plastic wrap that held the bleach solution on her hair. "Still yellowish. If mine's ready, let's rinse it out. I wanna get started on this." The plan that weekend was to do something, change something, so Kala could stop feeling like she'd just fallen off a truck and done a face-plant into the asphalt. Sebast hated that look in her eyes.

In the spacious bathroom, he took his shirt off—an old one, in case of dripping bleach solution—and sat on the edge of the tub with his head tipped back. Kala pulled on a pair of gloves, adjusted the water, and started rinsing the bleach out of his hair. It had grown out since the last, drastic cut, which Sebast referred to as The Nevada Shearing, and was now back to shoulder-length.

Despite both of them having black hair, they didn't quite match. Under strong sunlight it was possible to see that Sebast's hair was a warm black, while Kala's was true blue-black. _And a bitch to bleach, too_, he thought. He had only ever done streaks or tips before, and was honestly nervous about bleaching the whole thing, but Kala wanted to do ombre and he wanted to match her. Solidarity against the cruelties of love, or something.

"You heard they're doing another Chupacabra movie this year?" he asked, as she finished rinsing and squeezed the excess water out.

"Oh God. Didn't they learn from the _last_ one?" Kala chuckled a little again, and Sebast felt like he was winning the battle. Maybe, just maybe, if this little project was successful, he'd have his best friend back in peak ass-kicking condition instead of moping around.

Sebast stood up and grabbed the stylist's drape, slinging it around his shoulders to protect his back from the dye. He and Kala had done enough home hair coloring to have bought all the supplies. As he sat down on the closed commode with his back to her, he answered, "Of course not. Everyone hated it. So now they're gonna make another. This one has got that up-and-coming starlet in it, and it's supposed to be a story about finding yourself."

Kala was pouring measured graduations of dye into three plastic bowls, and stopped to look at him in horror. "Why am I thinking Goatsucker's Baby?"

He laughed, eyes bright. "Because you're a twisted soul, _mamita_. Get with the dye already. I need you to tell me how to do it so I don't screw it up."

"Hush," Kala said. "You watched the video more than I did. It'll be fine."

_I hope so,_ Sebast thought, as she separated out a length of his hair and began painting it from the ends up with three shades of blue dye.

…

"Are you _shitting_ me?" Cassie yelped, and swearing like that was unusual for her, as Tim knew. But then, she was under a lot of stress at the moment.

"Unfortunately not," he said, playing the video clip from Star City again. On the high-res monitor in the Titans Tower control room, the picture was as sharp as he could make it. A very brief glimpse, just under a minute, but he still recognized the gait, stance, and profile of both people in it. He didn't even need the flash of red when the helmet caught the light. After all, one of those people had once been one of his idols and had eventually tried to kill him. The other had been a teammate for years, and she had once memorably woken him up by crawling into bed with him. Topless. A stray thought flicked through Tim's mind, wondering if Kid Devil had recovered from seeing that yet.

Cassie actually _growled_ in sheer frustration, throwing herself down into a chair. "_Wonderful_. The thorn in my side and the guy who tried to kill you. Do we have any freaking clue what they're even doing?"

"I'm tracking Rose's credit card usage but not getting anything other than a _big_ cash advance," Tim replied, clicking a few keys.

"Oh, God," Cassie groaned, hiding her face in her hands. "Try matching violent crimes to pharmacy robberies where only adrenaline was taken. Maybe epinephrine. It boosts her precog. And it should be strange enough to be noted in police reports."

That search took a little longer, but Tim got a few hits. "I've got two cities with those kinds of robberies that have also had major child exploitation cases—with definite vigilante involvement—within a week of the pharmacy theft."

"That's Rose," Cassie said, sitting up.

"VICAP is on it, too—there are definite similarities." Tim scanned the notes, frowning. "Police respond to a report of a brothel specializing in minors, mostly illegal immigrants, and discover the owners and operators dead of slashing wounds, likely from a sword. Cash and some other assets cleaned out, the kids unharmed."

"Shit, that's her. She's taking the drugs _and_ killing again. Dammit, Rose, I say _one wrong word_ and you go completely off the rails!" Cassie smacked her fist into her opposite palm, furious.

Tim wanted to ask what she'd said, and more importantly remind her that not everything everyone else did was her fault or responsibility, but he'd just seen something else. "Uh-oh. There's two more with the same pattern, according to VICAP. No pharmacy hit those times, but there's a shorter interval. Maybe she still had some adrenaline left?"

And then the _name_ of the third city hit him, along with the location of the murders, and he had to take a deep breath. "And one of them is _Gotham_."

"Rose was in Gotham?!" Cassie swore, springing out of the chair to pace. "Dammit, she's been out of touch for a while, but I thought she was just cooling off! And now this shit. And in _Gotham?_ Is she out of her _mind_? Batman will _flatten_ her!" By that time she was swinging her arms to emphasis each point, almost clipping Tim's ear at one point.

"Could you not do that?" Tim snapped. She wasn't the only one whose temper was fraying. Difference was, he wasn't likely to give her a concussion if _he_ started flailing around like she was. Not that he didn't know half her problem was guilt … and the other half was protectiveness.

"Sorry, Tim," Cassie apologized.

"Yeah, the Gotham scene was the first one where the dead weren't just slashed. There are bullet wounds on several corpses. Safe to say Red Hood was involved in that one; one of his known triggers is violence against women and/or children, and the bullets are in his preferred caliber. Which means he either planned it with her, or more likely, they crossed paths on common interests and decided to join forces." Even as he spoke, he was pulling up another window and running a fast search for known aliases and other details that might help him track the former Robin.

"Great. Just freakin' perfect. Rose loses her mind, goes hunting kidnappers, and decides to start hanging out with Red Hood. They skip off into the sunset killing bad guys, and meanwhile you and I are trying to run this show ourselves while Jason's off the roster and giving serious thought to becoming a _farmer_ out in Kansas." Cassie had raised her hands skyward during that, as if in appeal to some deity, and then let them fall with a heavy sigh. "Can it get any crazier?"

Just then, a line of green text appeared on Tim's screen, next to a stylized icon of a green mask. _Why are you hunting Hood?_

"Apparently it can. Oracle's tracing my system." He typed back quickly, _The brothel murders last week may have been his. He appears to have teamed up with Ravager. Have video of the two of them walking together in Star City._

The reply came back quickly. _Hood left Gotham after the brothel killings. Owners of that brothel may have been involved with a large-scale human trafficking ring known as the Red Coin, which is the common denominator in the other Ravager cases you've identified. Already have search tracers in place for both Hood and Ravager, as well as other clients of Red Coin that may be potential targets._

"Way to make me feel inadequate, O," Tim muttered.

Behind him, Cassie raked both hands through her golden hair. He was peripherally aware that she was operating without her usual stress-relief outlets at the moment, and that separation from Jason—with whom they couldn't really talk about Titans business, considering he might not even come back—was adding immensely to that burden.

Tim was too preoccupied with his own frustrations. It aggravated him beyond all reason, Batman's inability to stop Red Hood from wandering in and out of Gotham however he pleased.

Or maybe it wasn't that he _couldn't_ stop his former pupil. Maybe in a way, he didn't _want_ to. Not as if it hadn't crossed Tim's mind when this particular case came to light. One of the boys rescued had been about ten. _Ten_. Hearing something like that, Jason Todd's way started to make a lot of sense.

…

Sebast's hair was wrapped in multiple layers of dye and plastic, but with luck he would end up with a deep blue at the tips that slowly changed to dark blue-purple at the roots. If he was unlucky … Kala didn't want to think about it, given how protective he was, but a box of jet-black dye would cure many evils.

Meanwhile, Kala was sitting in front of him while he carefully painted _her_ hair. The plan was for her to get purple at the tips to blue at the roots, and the blue was going to be a deep midnight tone because her hair stubbornly refused to lighten. Probably something to do with her invulnerability, which was depressing.

Three bowls of dye, three brushes, and a whole roll of plastic wrap were going into this project. They were also into _Chupacabra 3D: Goatsucker's Revenge_ by then, which in Kala's opinion was the best of the series. Certainly her favorite, anyway. "Oh yeah, here comes the part where the rich asshole developer guy goes into the chupacabra's cave. Eat 'em up, Chupi!"

Sebast promptly leaned down and made 'om nom nom' noises by her ear, which made Kala squeal and flinch away. "Hair dye! Hair dye is _not_ good for you, Sebast! Besides I meant for _him_ to get eaten, not me!"

He paused to look at the screen thoughtfully, and then shook his head. "Too greasy for me," Sebast proclaimed, and Kala wheezed laughter.

She was beginning to feel, bit by bit, as if her heart hadn't been ripped out and replaced with an ice sculpture that was slowly melting. Cheesy horror films, lots of calories, and a platonic life-mate really were the cure for all that ailed her.

Thinking that, Kala paused to touch Sebast's shoulder with the back of her gloved hand, where she didn't have any stray splashes of dye. "Hey. Thank you for this."

Sebast grinned up at her. "Your gratitude is appreciated, considering I could be rolling around with the website guy right now."

Kala rolled her eyes. "Holy shit, don't tell me you're making eyes at Javier?"

Instead of being ashamed, he preened. "Of course I am! He's one of those shy pretty ones, you know they fall all over me."

"We've known him like, a week? Week and a half? Not that that's ever stopped you before." Sebast had a definite preference for short-term casual hookups. He claimed to be allergic to jealousy and therefore avoided relationships.

"I know, right? It's like I run in dog years or something. A week for me is like, a _year_ for you."

Kala poked him in the back of the neck with the pointy end of the applicator brush. "Ass. Trust you to make a joke when I'm trying to be serious. Although, maybe that's it. Maybe I'm allergic to relationships. I don't realize until I'm a ways in, and then … _poof_. It all blows up in my face."

"Hey now. Your love life is not that episode of Mythbusters where they proved that non-dairy creamer will explode." Sebast's green eyes were utterly serious.

"What if it is, though? I mean, I'm not Jason. What if, y'know, the whole long-term relationship thing just isn't _me_?" Unlike her brother, Kala had never started naming the potential children of any of her lovers. Not even Dustin. Even now, Jason had had exactly two adult relationships, and both of them had been serious multi-month affairs. Kala privately wondered what was wrong with her, that she didn't have that. And most of the time, didn't really want it. She didn't want to be alone, but she didn't want to be tied down either.

"Hey." Sebast couldn't take her hands because of his gloves, but he stepped around in front, making her look at him. "So what if you're between boyfriends right now. You still have _me_, Kala. I'm always gonna be your best friend, your co-singer, your partner in crime. I'll always be here, all right?"

Kala managed a tremulous smile. "I love you, Sebastiáno."

"I love you, too, _mi_ Kala." For a moment they simply looked at each other, and then that devilish grin of his warned her that a snarky remark was on its way. "Now turn around so I can get on with the hair. _Dios_, you're the worst salon customer ever. You talk too much and you don't tip for shit."

"Shut your face, Chupi," Kala scolded affectionately, and looked obediently back at the television screen just in time to catch the film's climactic scene, with the protagonists setting fire to the half-built resort while the chupacabra was trapped inside.

…

The man on the table was literally dying of a broken heart; the organ was damaged beyond all possibility of repair in the same traumatic event that had maimed him. Machines kept his blood circulating, and the room temperature had been brought down to just above freezing to induce hypothermia and hopefully save his higher brain functions.

Scientists moved about him efficiently, never a wasted step. Damaged tissue and broken bones were reinforced and replaced, cybernetic fibers were connected to shorn nerves, but nothing could take the place of that fist-sized lump of muscle in the center of the chest. Long believed to be the seat of the emotions, perhaps even the soul, the heart was an essential organ.

Until now.

Artificial hearts existed, but none were as advanced as the piece of machinery now being carefully fitted into the man's chest. It lay inert as the scientist hooked up the veins and arteries to its tubes. All was finally ready, yet it did not beat.

It lacked a power source. In a small lead-lined box was the prize, recently liberated from a museum that had no idea what manner of rock they were displaying. A smallish chunk of green kryptonite, its radiation enough to power the heart. The head of the project lowered it carefully into place and then stepped back.

Silence in the room, broken by a faint beep on the heart monitor. The project lead grinned as the new heart picked up a steady rhythm. "Gentlemen—and ladies—witness the dawn of a new day for all mankind. And for this first, let him be called … Metallo."


	30. Breaking In, Shaping Up, Checking Out

This was a meeting of the powers-that-were, or at least some of them. Barbara Gordon didn't like face-to-face meetings very much. In the Clocktower, she had her fingers on the pulse of not just Gotham City, but the whole _nation_ if she wanted to—hell, the world if she felt like it. She didn't often cast her net that widely, but the fact that she _could_ at need was reassuring. Meeting in a public restaurant, she was still connected via phone and tablet and JLA communicator, but it wasn't the same. Those were just the narrowest tributaries of the mighty river of data Babs was used to navigating.

But this meeting had been requested to be in person, and Babs had no intention of denying Lois Lane. That she was Superman's _wife_ had nothing to do with it. Lois was the assistant editor of the _Daily Planet_, and according to Babs' sources she would likely take over as Editor-in-Chief when Perry White retired. She had proven herself trustworthy a hundred times over, even to the point of deliberately interfering with stories and obfuscating the truth. It had to go against every fiber of her being to withhold stories as huge as the secret identities of the JLA … but Lois understood the need for it. None of them could operate effectively if they went public. Their friends and families would constantly be in danger. Lois had experienced that herself, and with only one person knowing the family secret. If the whole world knew … that was a nightmare she'd fight to prevent.

The restaurant was Babs' choice, one where she knew the layout and was certain the private rooms in the back were actually _private_. She'd been there often enough that their table was already set up, one chair removed to allow convenient access for the wheelchair. She wheeled neatly into place and a waiter arrived at her elbow within seconds. Just a glass of water, for now.

Lois was two minutes early, and ordered a glass of wine before she ever sat down. The reporter was crackling with vitality, and Babs was wary. Lois was well known for being happiest while wreaking havoc. "So where is this rock hound?" she asked, as soon as Lois was seated.

The reporter grinned, glancing at her menu. "All business, as usual. You could at least tell me if the chicken marsala's any good."

"It's passable. The shrimp scampi is better. You were the one who insisted on meeting in person, Lois."

"I did," she replied, and put the menu aside. "You had to've heard about the museum robbery in Portland."

The salient facts came quickly to mind. "I did. I have the investigation reports and a tracer in the Police Bureau mainframe for any new info on the case. I also interviewed the junior curator. There was no reason to think it was the sort of rock we're concerned about. What's your analysis?"

Lois smirked. Babs couldn't help the irritation that rose up in her chest. She had completely reinvented herself as the information broker to the entire JLA, made the amassing and analysis of knowledge her specialty, and here was a snarky reporter _grinning_ at the prospect of showing her up. She smothered her temper and arched a brow patiently … even when the waiter turned up and took their order, further interrupting them.

Only once he was gone did Lois lean forward. "I spoke with the _senior_ curator. And I amped up the schmooze. Which is how I learned that this particular sample is definitely a meteorite, and that it fluoresces under UV light."

Babs sat up straighter, her eyes widening. That was a known property of kryptonite, but also certain other stones. "Did he also check…" she began.

Lois read her intention and answered before she finished the question. "The museum has a Geiger counter in the basement. The old guy was willing to take it out for me. Not unhealthy levels of radiation, but the area around the display case was definitely higher than background levels." The triumphant look in those hazel eyes was almost worth being shown up.

Babs' mind ran along chains of logic and deduction. One major stumbling block occurred. "This sample isn't like the others."

Nodding, Lois agreed. "I know. It's _blue_. But that could be due to some impurity in the stone. Or maybe it actually does come in more colors than we know of. It's not as if we know everything about the stuff, even now. The question is, who took it?"

"No," Babs said calmly. This was _her_ realm, and a tiny part of her soul rejoiced to see Lois taken aback. She stamped down on that impulse, hard. It was unworthy of her, and unworthy of Lois, too. "The real question is how did anyone find out what it was? Once we know that, we can narrow the list of who might've stolen it."

"How many people know the specific properties of that rock?" Lois asked, half-rhetorical. "And this is a site far from the other known meteorites. No one's going through every geological museum on Earth with a Geiger counter and a black light."

Babs pulled her tablet from her bag. Woefully slow compared to the mainframe at home, but it would do for now. A moment's searching based on a hunch gave her an answer. "NASA just unclassified some documents this year, relating to the meteor shower that brought us all known samples of that rock. Anyone with a motive and sufficient computing power could compose a list of potential meteorite strike locations, and then cross-reference it against museum collections. More and more of those are being listed online these days … and the Portland museum just started an online catalog of exhibits two months ago."

"You think it's Luthor?" Lois asked, lowering her voice.

"He likes having the market cornered," Babs commented. "But we should also consider profit as a potential motive. You're aware that the price of this stone is higher per volume than any other commodity on the planet?"

Narrowing her eyes, Lois just nodded. "Much as it annoys the shit outta me, yeah. I know."

"We need to know who Luthor's been competing with," Babs said. "It'd be advantageous for them to undercut him. And we need to explore other possibilities, too. Unfortunately the data is public; it's just a matter of who knows the specific properties of the stone." She already had ideas in that direction. False trails leading to potential meteorites would draw in the same thieves, and she could have some of her people lying in wait. They'd get multiple suspects, but….

Lois cut her off again. "I was thinking … a few years back, he slipped a piece of software into my office computer that tracked everything I did and reported back to him. Could you use that to sort of reverse-track your way into his computers?"

Babs blinked. _That_ was a lucky stroke indeed. "I can certainly try. But you erased the bug, right?"

Again with the grin; Babs was starting to see why Clark loved her so much. There was a ferocity to her that came through loud and clear when Lois was on the hunt. "Not before isolating it and copying it to a jump drive that's never been used for anything else. I can get it to you—but you have to keep me in the loop. I've seen what happens when people try to keep well-intentioned secrets, Barbara, and the outcomes _suck_. So promise you'll keep me informed, all right?"

"Done," Babs said. She outlined her plan to bait the thieves, and got enthusiastic approval. The welcome side-effect of that plan was entrapping people who knew about kryptonite. Even the ones who weren't suspects in this theft would be targeted and tracked. Anyone who knew Superman's weakness so intimately was a threat.

"Who all has it, do you know?" Lois said. "I know Luthor's been selling it like he's having a goddamn yard sale, but do we know who the major buyers are?"

"Black Mask bought a substantial supply last year, but Red Hood stole it. That stash is off the grid; Hood hasn't tried to sell it, or use it, so far. My assessment is that he has it for insurance purposes."

"Insurance?" Lois asked, her voice going cold.

"Just in case a certain someone decides to turn up in Gotham and solve all of Batman's problems for him," Babs said with another arch look. Their meals arrived, and they fell to plotting between bites.

…

Dustin muttered and grumbled and armed sweat off his forehead. Why the heck had he agreed to change the oil on this little sub-compact import in the first place? The damn things were engineered with such tight spaces he practically had to take the thing apart to get at anything. Even the oil filter—which should be _easy_, you had to change the oil more often than anything else—seemed to require an extra joint in his arm to reach. At the moment he was lying flat on his back underneath the car, with his right arm snaked up inside the engine compartment. That way he could get two fingertips and a thumb on the blasted oil filter, and _maybe_ get enough torque to turn the stupid thing, since his oil filter wrench wouldn't fit either….

Dustin's phone rang, and while he normally considered it an interruption, right then it was a welcome one. Especially since the song it was playing wasn't one he recognized, which meant Kala had probably gotten hold of it and programmed a ring tone of her choosing, which meant that was _Kala_ calling him.

He slid out from under the car, wiping his hands on the rag hanging from his pocket as he walked over to the toolbox where he'd left his phone. "Hey, Kala," he answered, already smiling.

"Hey, yourself," she said, and just the sound of her voice made everything okay again. "How's your mom?"

"Fine, fine. Starting to get sick of me and Dad worrying about her. She pitched a fit last night at dinner when Dad kept jumping up to refill her glass. Told us to stop treating her like a cripple." Dustin grinned at the memory of his mother, both hands on her hips glaring at them.

Kala chuckled. "Sounds like she's back to her old self. What'd you do?"

He laughed. "Asked her if I could borrow ten bucks for lunch. She threw a napkin at me, so everything's pretty much back to normal. What about you? What's new in the rock-star life?"

"Well…" She trailed off, and Dustin knew there was something she wanted to talk about. When they were kids, Kala would literally hop up and down in place when she had something she wanted to say but for some reason couldn't. He could picture those days perfectly.

He also knew why she was being hesitant. Kala did actually like his mother, even if Mom was a bit overwhelmed by her. Inviting the Kent girl home for dinner was sometimes a bit like opening the door to a benevolent tornado. "Look, Kala. Mom's fine. We got the results back yesterday—it's just a benign cyst. She's gonna be okay. So tell me whatever's on your mind before you explode."

Her laugh was silvery and wonderful. "You know me too well. Anyway, we got signed!"

"Holy shit!" The exclamation wasn't an ordinary one for him, but this wasn't ordinary news. "You really did? Hot damn!"

Kala actually giggled, as astounded as he was. "We have a record deal, two albums, two tours, plenty of studio time. I mean, there's never any guarantees in this business, but _we got signed_! KLK is on its way, baby!"

"I'm so happy for you," Dustin said fervently. And he meant it, too, even if this was another reason why they wouldn't be getting back together. Her career was taking off, with all that meant, and he'd found his place here in Smallville again. But Kala had wanted this as long as he'd known her, and even if he'd miss her, he couldn't help being delighted. Heck, he was even getting a bit choked up about it. "You're gonna go places, babe. I know it. God, Kala, I wish I could hug you right now so much."

Dustin had to swallow hard around the lump in his throat, and he missed what she said—Kala spoke so softly it was almost to herself. "What was that?" he asked.

"I said I wished you could, too," Kala said, and now her voice was full of longing. He got the feeling she'd changed her wording a bit, but didn't push it. She continued, "I miss you so much."

"I miss you too." Any time Kala was around, she expanded the possibilities to the horizons. What she'd given him was a gift beyond price: the knowledge that the whole world lay at his feet, that he could do anything he wanted to.

The fact was, what Dustin _wanted_ to do was take over the business that had been in his family for three generations, marry a girl he loved, and raise children in the town that he could navigate blindfolded. He wanted to live where he knew everyone and they all knew him. He wanted a job that made a material difference in people's lives; fixing cars might seem like a small thing, but it wasn't to people who relied on their vehicles to get them to work every day. Just because his dreams weren't big didn't mean they weren't good dreams.

Dustin wanted all of those things, but if he hadn't run away and joined up with Kala on her last tour and lived with her in Metropolis, he wouldn't appreciate them the way he did. Little towns all over the place were full of bitter, resentful people who wished they'd gone away to the city, people who felt like they'd wasted their lives. Dustin would never be one of them. He had Kala to thank for that.

"You know, there's a stop in Kansas City," she finally said, almost shyly.

"You'd better send me tickets, then," was his instantaneous reply.

"Front row," Kala shot back. "But if you wear that cowboy hat I'll stop the whole show to take it away."

"Oh, now I'm _definitely_ dressing like a cowboy. Boots and everything. I think I can find a bolo tie somewhere."

"People will think you got lost and went to the wrong concert." She was snickering, trying not to burst out laughing.

"I'll bring a great big sign that says 'I Love KLK' just so no one's confused."

"I love you, too."

A beat of silence followed her reply, the unconscious answer bringing back bittersweet memories for both of them. Kala hurriedly added, "Oh, and you should probably check my Facebook photos to make sure you recognize me."

Dustin chuckled softly. "I've seen you in stage makeup before, Kala. As long as you smile, I'll recognize you."

"Yeah, well, it might change by then, but the label loves what I did with my hair and they want me to keep it like that. So be prepared for blue hair."

"_Blue?!_" he yelped.

…

He gasped, sitting up, his chest aching, aching. Breath wouldn't come, and he raised his hand to his throat reflexively.

Then he _saw_ the hand, and gave a little whimper of horror. _Metal_, his right hand was mostly metal now, smooth dull grey with wires running back into the flesh of his forearm. He tried to flex his hand, and the … prosthetic? … obeyed. Those wires moved when he did it, and another ache started up in his forearm. And, bizarrely, in the hand.

Not wanting to see it anymore, he clasped it to his chest, and felt strange lumps under the shirt. Frantic now, he tore the shirt to get it off, and groaned. More metal in his chest, and a glowing green light shone out of it.

Nightmare, it had to be a nightmare, and he used the still-human fingers of his left hand to grab a healthy chunk of skin on his right bicep and pinch. _Hard_. Hard enough that he winced.

But didn't wake up. He looked at his hands, one callused and freckled, the other a machine. This couldn't be real, it couldn't be….

"Ah, you're awake," a man's voice said. He whipped around, and heard a whine of servos in his goddamn _neck_. The man wore a lab coat and looked at him with a whimsical smile. "I see the hand works properly."

"What've you done to me?" He meant to bellow the question, but it came out as a feeble croak.

"Why, I saved your life," the scientist said. For all that, he didn't approach any closer. "Can you tell me your name?"

His mouth opened … but that simple request stumped him. His name, his name, he heard it a dozen times a day, signed it even more, saw it on his driver's license and his mailbox. He could see the mailbox in his mind's eye, but not the name. That time he managed to shout. "You bastard, what've you done to my mind?!"

The scientist smiled incongruously. "Your name is Metallo now, my friend. And you have what you've always lacked: a purpose."

_Metallo_. Appropriate, but he wanted no part of it. His hands curled into fists, the left one silent, the right creaking as its metal joints were compressed. "Oh yeah? And what purpose is that?"

"You will kill Superman," the scientist said calmly.

…

"Miss Thorne?"

The voice startled Elise out of her fascinated contemplation. She was following the tests on the experimental polymer avidly. The stuff was almost supernatural; it looked so delicate, but it was wickedly strong. So far its only downside was a tendency to warp drastically under heat. For applications where the environmental temperature was stable, though, it'd be amazing.

"Sorry, I was lost in thought," she chuckled, turning to look at the man who'd approached and now offered his hand. A distinguished older gentleman, tall, dark-skinned, with iron-grey hair. She knew enough engineers to suspect he was one, based on the calluses on his fingers when she shook with him. That particular pattern came from holding a drafting pencil and using a mouse in computer-aided design.

"Getting lost in thought is never a bad thing," he said with a charming smile. "Would you mind coming with me?"

"Sure," Elise replied. He led her out of the lab and into the elevator, picking a subfloor that required him to insert his badge. Only then did Elise start to wonder what was going on. "I'm sorry, sir, I didn't get your name."

"I didn't give it to you," he said with that same disarming expression. "Miss Thorne, Dr. Chisholm told me you had an interest in plant toxins, is that right?"

"It is." Now she was cautious. Had she seen something she shouldn't have? But they'd had her sign a mountain of non-disclosure agreements before she ever walked into the labs.

He nodded. "Good. You might be able to do us a favor, then. If I were to show you a sample of a suspected toxin, do you think you could narrow down the range of what it might be?"

"Of course. But I'm sure you have experts with far more experience than I do." Elise scowled a bit, her brow furrowing. Maybe this was some kind of test…?

"We do, but you happen to be the closest person, and there's a bit of urgency." The elevator stopped then, and he stepped out, Elise following behind him.

This was another lab, smaller than the ones above, and even more secure. The mysterious man brought Elise to a workstation where a wealth of data was up on the screen. She forgot everything else except the problem in front of her. And it was all the information she could've wished for: gas spectrometer readouts, chemical composition of various elements, molecular weights … Elise dove in.

But something was weird. She swiveled around in her chair, frowning. "Okay, this is probably some kind of tropane alkaloid, very similar to drugs derived from plants like datura, jimsonweed, deadly nightshade—most of the Solanaceae family has at least some toxicity. Yet the data is nothing I've ever seen or heard of before. Are you developing a new synthetic anticholergenic drug? Or is this a toxin secreted by a plant species new to science?"

"Neither," said a harsh voice from the corner, and Elise startled. The workstation was well-lit, but the rest of the lab wasn't, and she hadn't known anyone was lurking in the shadows.

"Well, what is it then?" she asked.

Her answer was another question. "How would you treat someone exposed to toxic levels of the compound?"

That wasn't actually in her field of study, but Elise had researched it anyway. What was the point of knowing all about what a poison could do to your body if you didn't know how to fight it? "Depends on how badly they were affected. Cholergenic drugs could reverse it, but there's a risk of cardiac side effects, and the symptoms will completely reverse if given enough time. I'd say get the patient on life support, get some activated charcoal into the gut if it was ingested."

"The route of exposure is absorption via mucous membranes," the shadowy figure said.

"Huh. That's even weirder. People usually swallow, smoke, or snort stuff like this." Elise shrugged, still considering the problem. "Charcoal's out, then. Maybe hit them with naloxone and thiamine to try and reverse some effects. It can cause psychosis, agitation, and hallucinations, so if they need chemical sedation, Ativan's usually the drug of choice. Gotta watch out for central nervous system depression, though. And keep monitoring vitals, because this is _new_ and you need to stay on top of it. But all anticholergenics are completely reversible, so it's really just a matter of holding out past the CNS side effects, and keeping the patient from panicking and hurting themselves."

She could see the barest sketch of a nod from the shadows, and then the man who'd led her down said, "Good. Very good. Thank you, Miss Thorne. We can head back upstairs now." He turned to go.

Elise didn't stand up. "Wait. This is _new to science_. I mean, I've been seeing stuff every day that blows my little sophomore mind, but you can't just show me a completely new tropane alkaloid, expect me to analyze it, and not give me anything else! Where did it come from?"

That was when the man in the shadows stepped forward, and Elise's jaw dropped as he came into view. "It came from someone known as Poison Ivy," Batman said calmly.

Elise could only stare. And then she started to get angry. This gorgeous lab, the careful hint from Dr. Chisholm … the whole damn thing was a setup. "Dammit, if this is another one of Oracle's cute little tests, I'm _done_. I told her I'm not interested in working for you!"

"You don't work for me. You're an intern with Wayne Enterprises. I just needed your help," Batman said. "I wasn't aware of any plans by Oracle to recruit you. She doesn't always keep me informed. Lucius said he'd heard good things about you, and we needed a human analysis of the compound quickly. Computers aren't always completely reliable with unknowns." The barest hint of a smile below the mask.

Lucius … oh, God, _now_ she knew why the man who'd brought her down here was familiar! That was Lucius Fox, CEO of the entire company. Elise turned to look at him in disbelief, and he just shrugged slightly. "Wayne Enterprises has a … solid working relationship with Batman specifically, and the JLA generally. It brings a lot of challenges to the job, let me tell you. Your field of study is going to be extremely useful, and your demonstrated ability to think on your feet, even more so. If you were interested in working with us, we'd be glad to have you."

"I…" Elise trailed off, confused. This morning she would've said a job offer from Wayne Enterprises was the answer to her dreams. But when it included the fact that she'd be working with heroes….

She gave an irritated sigh. Apparently fate or destiny or whatever had plans for her, and it was hopeless to fight. Especially not when the work she'd be doing was exactly what she _wanted_ to do. "Oh, the hell with it. Sign me up."

…

"Well, if they're hunting us, we must be close," Rose quipped. She was sitting on the end of the bed, taking stock. Her uniform had mostly protected her, but there would be bruises under the material. It had to be light enough to let her move freely and wield those swords.

"Yeah," Jay chuckled. His armor was heavier, and he'd felt at least one bullet hit the vest. Once upon a time that would've spooked him, but Jay knew now that no one managed to get through this life without accumulating some scars and near-misses. Some nearer than others.

Emptying his pockets onto the room's single scarred table, he noted that it was time to restock some of his toys. Add that to replacing some armor. Still, the night's work was worth the toll on equipment. They had busted a shipping point for Red Coin, and drawn some serious fire that had left them both pressed despite their abilities. Luckily Jay had a bolthole here in San Francisco.

Unluckily, it was just one room, and a small one at that. One of each, pretty much: door, window, chair, table, and bed. It had its own tiny bathroom, just a commode and a sink with a cracked mirror above it. So he and Rose were now in much closer company than he expected on such short acquaintance, but the hell with it. Wouldn't be the first time Jay had slept sitting up in a chair.

The _important_ thing was that it was paid up two years in advance, never checked on, and had the basic comforts taken care of. Oh, and he'd stashed ammo and a few minor gadgets, as well as a first-aid kit, in between the wall joists. Which, considering that he could suddenly smell the iron tang of blood, was a good thing.

Jay turned, casual, and saw that Rose had shrugged out of the top half of her costume. She wore a tank top underneath, and on one bicep was an angry red line. So she'd been grazed by a bullet. Rose had her own first aid kit and was already taking care of it without paying more than cursory attention to Jay.

He couldn't help a grimace; once upon a time he'd had several old scars just like that, plus plenty more from knives and clubs and broken bottles. More wounds that he could remember, though the important ones he'd never forget. Jay's hand had automatically drifted to his own bicep, the first big scar he'd gotten as Robin—a bullet graze just like the one Rose was disinfecting right now. He'd come damn close, too eager to take down the bad guy to check _every_ possible angle of fire, and Batman had given him one hell of a dressing-down for it.

Only later, when Alfred changed the bandage, had the butler quietly remarked on how badly frightened Bruce had been. Jay had understood then that the scolding had come from Bruce's fear of losing another child. It was only later, when he'd stopped fitting so neatly into Golden Boy's mold, that he became a soldier instead of a son.

Bitter thoughts, and Jay thrust them aside. His scars were gone, stolen by the Lazarus Pit, so there was a jolting disconnect every time a memory made him touch one and he felt smooth skin instead. Unblemished, unbroken, as if he'd never faced more trauma than the average civilian. It was enough to make a guy take more risks than he should….

He drew his knife and carefully levered out the panel of plaster that hid his stash. Plenty of ammunition, packed safely away, plus the fifth of scotch that was also hidden there. Hey, it could work as disinfectant, anesthetic, and sleep-aid, so it had to be considered first aid, right? "You hit anyplace else?" he asked, not looking over his shoulder.

"One of 'em tried to hamstring me, but the boots handled it," Rose said. Jay heard the rip of paper packaging, and when he turned back she was placing sterile gauze over the wound.

"Anesthetic?" Jay asked, holding the scotch up by the neck and giving the bottle a swirl. He dropped into the only chair, and immediately regretted it as the wood creaked under his weight.

"Sure," Rose said, holding her hand out. "Got shot glasses around somewhere?"

From where he was sitting, he only had to lean a bit to hand it over. The room would've been claustrophobically small to most people. Jay had lived in worse. "Nope, not that fancy. Don't worry about drinking from the bottle. It's hundred-proof, it'll kill the germs."

That made Rose laugh, a surprisingly un-sarcastic laugh. She took a swig, and passed the bottle back. "Thanks. So, what's next?"

Jay had just about finished getting out of his own armor, leaving him in pants and a white t-shirt. He leaned back in the chair and sighed, the adrenaline from the fight draining away. "Lay low for a bit, then see how much further we can track this thing upstream. You yanked the shipping documents, right?"

"Of course." She flipped a handful of folded pages at him, which Jay glanced over. Nothing obvious, but he wasn't at his sharpest right then. Maybe something would jump out at him later. Rose leaned forward, propping her elbows on her knees, and regarded him thoughtfully. "Laying low means staying here, doesn't it?"

"Yeah. Shouldn't be too difficult, for a few days. Security's tight, way tighter than the management here thinks. We can get food delivered. And I've slept worse places than this chair." Jay shrugged one shoulder, taking a hit of the scotch, and then looked at the top page again. Steel shipping containers, the kind that traveled all over the world on freight ships and semi trucks. Anonymous, easy to conceal, even when the cargo was alive. A bitch to track, too.

"Then I guess we'd better get the obvious question out of the way," Rose said.

"Mm-hmm," Jay muttered, only halfway paying attention. Which port had the damn things really come out of?

He trusted Rose, to a point. She had no motive to hurt him and a pretty strong one to stay on his good side. So any noise coming from her direction that didn't sound like a weapon being drawn could be safely ignored. And that was how she took him completely by surprise.

Jay had been leaning back in the chair, studying the documents, and Rose just plucked them out of his hands. He looked up to ask why, and realized she'd ditched the rest of the uniform, leaving her in just the eye patch, the tank top, and a black thong. No time to question that, either, because she straddled his lap in a very matter-of-fact way, her arms laced around his neck. And then she kissed him.

His arms automatically went around her despite the surprise; the chair really wasn't stable with both of them in it. It was like his mind had slipped gears and Jay was coasting along in neutral, noting impressions. Rose was warm and slender in his arms, her long white hair curtaining them both. Her mouth tasted like scotch and adrenaline, and she smelled like blood, sweat, smoke, and the oil she used on her swords—a weirdly appealing combination, to him anyway. There was no artifice in her kiss, just a sort of questioning, her teeth nipping at his lip. Almost like it was a dare.

It had been months since London, and Talia, and Jay couldn't help comparing the two for a moment. Most of the time, Talia kissed like it was a martial art she'd mastered. Not playful and pushy and just a bit hesitant the way Rose was kissing him, as if she was both challenging him and setting herself up to pretend it had been nothing important if he backed off.

His brain decided to kick back into gear then. No way was he gonna push her away. Beautiful, deadly, royally fucked-up but still refusing to just roll over and play by the rules, or give up and play dead? Hell yeah, that was right up his alley. Jay pulled her tight against him and nipped at her lower lip. When Rose broke the kiss to gasp, he grinned at her. "The obvious question, huh?"

The smile she returned was almost feral. "A guy, a girl, and a bed, locked in together for two or three days? Might as well find out now rather than watch you make an ass of yourself trying to flirt—or watch you sleep in a chair because you're too fucking noble to make a move." And with that, Rose pulled the tank top off and dropped it to the floor. Well, she couldn't have been any clearer, and Jay admired that.

He didn't even mind when they broke the chair.


	31. Through the Course of Our Actions

**Sorry this is running behind, all. Between the father-in-law's surgery and recovery (he's still not really to where I hoped he'd be), work running me insane, Anissa's job running_ her_ insane, and my computer frying my hard drive, it's been a rough one. Hopefully this one will make up for the wait. :D With any luck, I'll be posting this from my comp next week instead of Anissa's. ;)**

* * *

><p>Gotham City was never truly silent. But the Batman knew the textures of its quasi-silences and what each of them meant. Though he looked to be completely alone on the high metal lacework of the radio-tower, he wasn't fooled. "I know you're there."<p>

"I know you know." Superman let himself drift into view, cape rippling lightly in the evening breeze. "How've you been?"

"What do you want?" Superman didn't deserve that surly defensiveness; if anyone on the face of the Earth would drop by just to see how he was doing, it was him. But it was his habit as well as his nature to put his guard up when under threat, and on high alert Bruce's defenses recognized no allies other than those he'd trained himself. Even they got a measure of acidic preemptive defense from time to time.

Clark, however, didn't react to it. "I wanted to know how you were," he said amiably.

A low bark of laughter from his throat startled Bruce minutely because he hadn't known he was going to laugh. "I'm fine, Superman. You've got your own issues to handle. Let me take care of mine."

The Kryptonian sighed. "Come on, Bruce. I know Black Canary's in Star City. I also know Nightwing is laid up with four broken ribs."

"I fought Killer Croc with broken ribs." It wasn't a boast; he hadn't had a choice, having to win his way past Croc just to survive the night. He'd been coughing blood by the time he got home, but Bruce had lived. Mostly thanks to his own stubborn resolve; Alfred's vast medical knowledge and first-aid training; and a cadre of doctors who surely believed he was the worst skier, surfer, and rock-climber ever to wander into a sports store.

"He also has sprains, strains, and contusions. _You_ were the one who took him off the roster, Batman. Despite his insistence otherwise," Clark pointed out.

He looked away to hide his smile. Dick had insisted he was fit to fight, but Bruce had had to overrule him. He tried as hard as he could not to repeat his more egregious mistakes, and letting his allies get hurt trying to push themselves as hard as he did was one of those. It had happened to Jay…

…a door slammed shut on that thought. Jason Todd was still a knife in Bruce's heart, and the last thing he needed was for Clark to guess the run of his thoughts and try to play counselor. He had enough of that from Diana. In the end it had soured their relationship, but all his relationships failed eventually. Bruce had come to expect it. To have the companionship of women whom he admired so greatly for a little while, knowing he would lose them, was still worth it.

All he said to Superman was, "Do you have a point?"

"Not really. Just concerned. You know how worried you were about me when we found out about Ma?" He hovered there, arms folded.

"I was not worried about you. I was concerned by how the loss would affect your effectiveness and your demeanor. You're a public figure, Superman, and that's a burden not even I would willingly shoulder." Bruce spoke with a stern edge to the words, still not quite meeting Clark's gaze.

"You were _worried_," Clark insisted. Stubborn farm-boy. Maybe it took that kind of tenacity to grow up in small-town Kansas. Clark's optimism was more durable than his invulnerable skin.

Bruce didn't respond, raising a hand to his ear as an interesting report crossed the police band. Another museum theft, one that should've been impossible to pull off, but this thief was either very well-trained, or had a natural gift for larceny. Perhaps both. "I have to take this," he said, and dove off the tower.

Clark, of course, followed him. Bruce didn't need the cameras built into his cowl to know Clark was shaking his head slightly. Well, irritating as it was to have someone utterly convinced that outside help was _exactly_ what Gotham needed, even he had to admit that super-senses were occasionally useful at detecting clues at crime scenes.

…

Jason raced toward the forbidding dull-gray door. Kala was behind it, and she was in danger—the kind of danger only he could save her from. Not even Dad could do what he was about to do. Jason's strength was the balance of having a foot in both worlds, Kryptonian enough to peel the metal door right out of its frame and human enough to survive the kryptonite radiation pulsing behind it.

The radiation Kala was being exposed to _right now_. Nausea, weakness, muscle aches, ringing ears, blurring vision, all of that and more. Jason grabbed confidently for lead-shielded steel, bracing himself for the moment that the kryptonite bit into him.

Nothing happened.

His hands slapped painfully against the door, and for half a second Jason was dumbfounded. His fingers should've sunk into the metal like it was clay, molding it into a handhold he could grab to rip away the whole door. He tried again, and again all he got was stinging palms.

His _sister_ was behind that door, his snarky shower-singing Halloween-pajamas-in-June twin, Kala was _dying_ on the other side, and Jason scrabbled at the door until he left bloody streaks on the impervious metal, screaming at her to hold on while somewhere Lex Luthor laughed at him…

…he woke with a startled jerk to see Kala's concerned face right above him, and Jason reflexively grabbed her into a hug. She yelped in surprise, but hugged him right back, and for a long moment they just held each other. When they were little they'd always slept like that, curled up so close that Richard had joked about them combining like Voltron.

Finally Jason was awake enough that every corner of his mind believed she was real, that she was here and okay. He'd had his powers in Nevada, he'd saved his sister, everything was pretty much all right—other than _not_ having his powers right now, but even that he was getting used to. Finally he could relax, and sigh, and let Kala sit up.

"Nightmare, huh?" she said, and when he nodded, Kala gave him a bittersweet smile. "Mine are back too. Must be the stress."

Some things didn't need discussion. "Yeah, must be. So what brings you creeping through my window at…" he glanced at the clock "…a quarter to eleven? Good thing my roomies aren't in."

Kala chuckled. "Like I wouldn't check first, of course. I was hungry and lonely, so I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone." She grabbed a bag off the nightstand and nudged him with it, spicy scents drifting up from within.

"Aww, so you brought me dinner? Thanks, Kala. I feel loved." The fact that he had a class at six in the morning was irrelevant. Jason could sleep later; time with his twin was precious these days.

"Hey, I was going out for burritos anyway, and you know I really miss … my scaly nephew." With that Kala stood up and went toward the iguana's cage, laughing. Her silvery laugh was music to Jason's ears, but he crumpled up a napkin and threw it at her anyway.

She had to turn on a light to wake Gazeera up enough to take him out of his cage without the lizard freaking out, and only then did Jason see her hair. His jaw dropped a little; that was the most drastic change yet. "Whoa! You went _blue_?!"

"Yeah. Isn't it gorgeous?" Kala twirled around, making her ponytail spin out behind her.

Jason had to admit that it looked good. Kala's hair had always had a hint of bluish highlights; she'd inherited their father's indigo-black hair, while Jason had Lois' hair that had been blonde when he was little, gradually darkening to the warm black it was these days. Now that she'd gone completely blue with a little purple, it really suited her—but she was his sister. "It's pretty cool."

Kala scoffed. "Sebast's matches."

Why wasn't he surprised? Jason chuckled, and then something occurred to him. "So … how're you gonna hide that if you have to fly in for something?"

She froze for a second in the middle of reaching into Gazeera's cage. "Aw, _shit_." The iguana crawled toward her hand, and Kala gave her shoulders a little shake as she picked him up, cradling the lizard to her chest. "Well, I usually only turn up where you're in peril, and since you're not active duty right now…"

"Kal, I might not be active duty ever again," Jason said quietly.

Sitting down on the bed beside him, she petted Gazeera's spines. "Don't say that. We don't know what could happen."

"Yeah, and my powers not coming back is still a possibility. Which means it'll be on you, one way or another." Kala had always been the one who wanted the legacy. She still spoke better Kryptonese than he did.

"Didn't we just have this discussion? Jase, I _can't_. I can't be a rockstar and a hero. And I'm not cut out for the hero gig anyway. There's a reason Jor-El trained you instead of me."

Part of him wanted to insist. Kala had this whole complex about not being good enough for the legacy. Before Nevada, she was intensely proud of their heritage, and Jason knew perfectly well what had changed. Her pride had played right into General Zod's plans, and she'd come way too close to turning against her family.

At least, that was how it felt for her. Jason remembered that when Kala had seen them, actually _seen_ both him and Dad fighting to save her, she'd snapped out of it pretty quick. And then put down one of Dad's most dangerous enemies, even if she'd nearly died herself in doing so. She was no saint, he'd known that all their lives, but she wasn't evil, either. Far from it. In his heart of hearts Jason really didn't believe she had the potential to go dark in anything but her wardrobe.

Convincing Kala of that was another matter entirely, and he just didn't have the energy at the moment. At least the burritos were tasty. He changed the subject, getting her talking about the band, and Kala filled him in on the details of the contract they were going over with a label. Of course she'd texted him the news, but now Kala could wax poetic in her excitement. "…And there's going to be an actual _album_, one you can buy in just about any store, professionally produced and marketed. No more harassing visual art major friends from high school into designing our album covers. Although that first self-produced album is gonna be super collectable if we hit the big time, so I hope you kept your copy." Her eyes flashed amusement.

"Of course I kept it!" Jason said, mock-wounded. "Jeez, Kala, I always need another drink coaster."

"Ass," she laughed, and swatted his shoulder lightly. That woke up Gazeera, and the iguana flicked his tail, clawing for a better grip on Kala's shirt. She petted him soothingly. "Whoa, easy there, lean green salad-eatin' machine. Go back to sleep, little lizard. Auntie Kala's just beating up your dad."

"I'm happy for you," Jason told her, and meant it. Seeing Kala lose her taste for being the Last Princess of Krypton had broken his heart a little, but watching her achieve her other dream was sweet enough to make up for it.

"So am I," she said, grinning. And then the smile faltered. "I just wish Dustin was around to see it."

Jason sighed. In the beginning, he hadn't wanted his best friend and his sister dating. It just seemed like a recipe for disaster, especially given the differences between Smallville and Metropolis. He'd thawed toward the idea after the Nick debacle, just glad Kala was with a guy her own age and someone Jason trusted. For a while it looked like they'd make it work, but it had fallen apart there at the end. He and Dustin had talked about it over Skype, and from what the other boy said, it had all come down to a basic incompatibility. Kala loved the city, she loved traveling and living like a gypsy on tours. Dustin loved the country, and he really loved living in the same town his great-grandparents had settled in. If either of them tried to change for the other, they'd just be unhappy.

"Trust me, he's seeing it," Jason told her. "He follows KLK on Facebook, y'know. And he's always gonna be our friend. You haven't lost him, Kal."

Her sad little smile broke his heart. "Yeah, I haven't but I have. Jase … I'm starting to think I'm not cut out for normal relationships."

"Well yeah, abnormal as _you_ are," he teased, but she grinned half-heartedly.

"It's not that. It's just … things just don't work out for me. Like Nick, there was a built-in time limit there, we both knew I wasn't gonna follow him home and hang around while he goes through medical school. And Dustin, I should've known better, neither of us can live in each other's worlds no matter how much we love each other. Alan was just a mistake." She shrugged, laughing softly. "The most stable non-familial relationship in my life is my hetero-lifemate bromance with Sebast."

Her phrasing struck him as funny. "Kala, you can't be in a bromance. You're a girl."

Kala scoffed. "Don't be sexist. Sebast thinks of me as his bro, therefore it's a bromance. Speaking of Sebast, you wanna hear a sign of the end times?"

"Oh God, what now?" With Sebast, it could be _anything_.

Kala held both hands up. "Wait, wait, this is terrifying. So the coder and webmaster for our website is this cute Ecudoran guy named Javier. And Sebast is trying to be in a relationship with him."

"Sebast? In a relationship?" Jason stared in disbelief. "I thought he was allergic to those." They'd known Sebast since high school, and he had always preferred _extremely_ short-term hookups. He'd always claimed that commitment wasn't his style.

"So did I, but apparently he feels a connection with Javier. Maybe he's just grown out of his groupie-seducing phase." Kala shrugged one shoulder.

Jason could only shake his head. The whole world was topsy-turvy, it seemed, and Sebast _dating_ was just one more symptom of it.

"Speaking of relationships, how's the blonde bombshell?" Kala asked.

At her question, Jason realized with a guilty start that he hadn't spoken to Cassie in … three days? "Oh, man, I should call her. Or text or IM or something. I … it's really hard to get together, with the way things are right now."

Kala crossed her arms—careful of the slumbering iguana—and arched a brow. She looked eerily like Mom when she did that. "Really? She can still fly. Just because you can't do your Metropolis Jumping Bean impression right now doesn't mean you two can't see each other."

"Yeah, but … she and Tim are running the Titans, and I can't really talk about that kind of stuff with them anymore. When we do get together it's mostly silent."

"Uh, how much bullshit is that? Last I checked, didn't you tell me the original Batgirl had to retire after an injury, and she's still in the game?"

That was an oversimplification of Oracle's situation, but the point held. Even more so, as a matter of fact. As Batgirl, Babs had kicked a lot of butt in Gotham City, and saved a lot of people. As Oracle, she'd trained young heroes, saved even more people around the world, and _still_ managed to kick some butt every now and then.

So why hadn't Jason thought of that until now? He hung his head miserably.

"Just because you can't throw a truck at a bad guy doesn't mean you have to quit. You're more than your powers, Dopey. See, this is why I'm the brains and you're the brawn."

That wounded his pride a little. "Hey! Who's going to college? For astrophysics, mind you, at Johns Freaking Hopkins, too?!"

Kala snorted, and Gazeera lashed his tail sleepily. "Yeah, the same guy who's sitting here navel-gazing and neglecting his hot babe of a girlfriend as well as his caped alter-ego just because he thinks he's not a _real_ boy without the ability to catch bullets with his face. Sure, Lizardboy, you're the smart one."

Jason cuffed at her amiably, Kala ducked, and Gazeera hissed at them both. "All right, all right, you win. Let's quit before we give Gazeera a heart attack."

"It's nice to hear you admit it. Isn't it, Ignatius? Isn't your daddy a silly boy? Yes he is." She crooned to the iguana, rubbing his chin with a fingertip, and the lizard clung to her shirt with his eyes closed.

…

Ultraviolet light bathed an unassuming dark stone—and turned it a deep, shimmering blue. The rays refracted through the kryptonite, throwing spots of blue light around the room. One briefly painted Lex Luthor's face as he stared at his newest acquisition.

"It has all the characteristics of kryptonite," Mercy said, making notes. "And yet it's not the same as the samples we have. Different radioactive properties."

"Well, that's why we have the dog," Lex said philosophically.

Within moments a small sample of the meteorite had been brought into the Project Uplift lab. The technician in charge took out a box of dog biscuits, and whistled, which quickly brought both the ordinary shepherd bitch and the blue-eyed white dog that everyone had taken to calling Krypto, after Lex's half-joking moniker.

Krypto froze at the sight of Lex and Mercy, and put his hackles up, growling softly. His dam stopped halfway to where the tech with the biscuits stood, a prudent distance outside the bars, and whined. She wagged her tail, looked toward the humans, and licked her chops, but then glanced back at her offspring.

The white dog lowered his head, glaring. He knew not to charge the bars; a few weeks ago they'd had to move him and his dam to a new enclosure, because his adult teeth were coming in. And Krypto's puppy-teething was slowly wearing through the steel. Now the bars around their cage were made of impure green kryptonite sheathed in lead. Radioactive enough to hurt when he bit down, but not enough to kill him before someone from maintenance could repair the damage.

So he avoided the bars scrupulously, never so much as touching them. No one was allowed to enter the cage, now, either. Not even scientists were immune to the charm of a playful puppy, and one of them had gone in after hours for a rousing game of fetch. Except when the super-pup had nipped at the woman's hands excitedly, wanting her to throw the ball for him, he'd drawn blood and crushed bones. Someone _else_ had foolishly tried to teach Krypto not to bite, by smacking him with an iron pipe when he nipped at a hand holding a biscuit through the bars. That had ended with the puppy getting a new chew toy in the form of said iron bar, and the idiot guard having his arm broken in three places by a single snap-and-shake of those jaws.

Now no one dared get close to him, and he was becoming feral. A long slide had been installed in the cage so that food, treats, and toys could be dropped in without anyone getting too close. The bitch missed people, and whined and pawed at the bars, but Krypto was possessive of her and growled at anyone who tried to touch her.

When neither animal came any closer, the tech dropped a few biscuits through the slide. The shepherd grabbed them up, crunching them eagerly, but her white-furred son never moved, nor shifted his gaze from Lex and Mercy.

"Smart little bastard," Lex commented.

"He gives me the creeps," Mercy admitted. "All of that power in a non-human mind."

"None of them are _human_," Lex corrected.

She shrugged. "Non-sentient, then. At least we can communicate with Kryptonians as one intelligent primate to another. That thing is nothing like us."

Mercy had a point. There was no point in attempting empathy with an animal. He glanced at his watch, and said, "Start the exposure."

The sample was removed from its box and placed near the bars. If it worked like ordinary kryptonite, the response should've been immediate. And there was _some_ reaction—Krypto shook his head roughly, and pawed at his ears. The trembling weakness and obvious pain weren't in evidence, however.

Lex kept up the exposure for half an hour, during which time the white dog would've been prostrate and shivering even with a comparable amount of the most diluted green kryptonite. He showed some anxiety, pacing and whining, but the female licked his face and nuzzled him until he laid down. And there he sat, panting, staring at the blue stone, until Lex ordered it put away. "Inconclusive," he muttered.

Mercy had kept her silence throughout the experiment, and when she spoke her voice was contemplative. "There was _some_ effect. More subtle than the green. Perhaps it's a weaker variant?"

That would an unwelcome outcome, considering that Lex had traded five times the volume of green kryptonite—of the third iteration, too, the purest form currently available on the black market—for this unusual specimen. The thieves who'd stolen it from the museum in Portland had guessed correctly that Lex, who traded in more kryptonite than anyone else on the planet, would be interested in the oddity. They hadn't known what they held … but then, neither did anyone else. Green kryptonite was the most common type of an extremely uncommon substance, and there were rumors of a red variant that Lex was actively tracking down, though he hadn't yet acquired a sample. This blue form was completely unheard of.

"You're right, but I don't think it's weaker. Just different. Maybe psychological; Krypto there did seem quite anxious. No pain, though." And _that_ could be useful. One of the main problems with green kryptonite was that it was dramatic. Superman and his kids knew when they were being exposed to it, and they were extremely cautious of it. This new, more insidious type might be a stealthier weapon….

"Should we attempt testing on Scion?" Mercy asked. "Unlike the dog, he can give us verbal feedback on the effects."

For a moment, Lex considered it. The boy was extremely precocious and articulate; he could tell them precisely what was happening during an exposure. But there was the possibly that _some_ kind of harm was occurring. Even if the stone merely triggered a fear reaction … and they knew how Scion reacted to threats. Lex saw in his mind the careless guard thrown down the hallway, and remembered the strength tests they'd given the boy. His powers were not at their height yet, and Mercy suspected he needed a rush of adrenaline to make them fully active, but the child was still fully capable of doing them both immense harm. And like the dog, he was _smart_, markedly more intelligent than most of his breed.

"No, we can't risk antagonizing him in any way," Lex finally said. "His purpose lies in siding with us, unquestioningly, and we can't jeopardize that."

"True," Mercy said. "Perhaps when he's older, and understands the merit of scientific inquiry. Someday we will have to tell him about kryptonite, you know."

Lex chuckled. "Someday we'll have to tell him how he came to be, too, but at least we have a script for that. We ought to work on how to introduce the idea of kryptonite. I just don't want him to question his loyalty to us when he realizes we have more of it than anyone else on Earth."

"No one else knows how to manufacture it." Mercy shrugged.

But someone knew where to _find_ it, and Lex's installation in Nevada so many years ago had precluded his salvage operation in the Atlantic Ocean to recover the fragments of the kryptonite island. Besides, he'd expected his government contacts to discreetly channel their findings to him—every nation in the world that knew of its existence had wanted a piece of kryptonite, no matter how much they might claim to love the Man of Steel.

And yet, very little was ever recovered. Lex had seen footage of Superman's impossible flight to lift that island out of Earth's gravity, and had seen enormous chunks of impure kryptonite go tumbling into the ocean. There should have been significant volumes of it recovered. That so little had been found told Lex that there was at least one other major player in the kryptonite market, one proactive enough to get ahead of the salvage operators—but whoever it was, they had bought and held instead of trading. And _that_ was interesting.

…

Everyone was there … well, almost everyone. Steph had installed surveillance cameras so she could watch from a distance, and the warehouse specified in the meeting currently looked like a who's-who of Gotham crime. The Maronis, the Falcones, a few of Black Mask's lieutenants, some of Two-Face's crew … an unwelcome thought popped up in the back of her mind. _I could've done a lot of good if I'd just rigged the place with explosives_.

No, that was a Red Hood kind of plan. At least _that_ asshole was out of the city. Funny, he hadn't been on the invite list for this, but then Batman considered him a different class of criminal. Of course, he _had_ been a Robin once.

Steph was starting to get a little nervous now, though. The assembled crooks were posturing and threatening and wanting to know who'd called this meeting. (She couldn't help remembering how Hood had handled it, but a bunch of heads in a duffel bag weren't her style. Plus it had now been done, and wasn't as impressive.) Only one of the main players was still missing. Funny thing, though, Steph had _heard_ of him, but never actually laid eyes on the guy.

Well, there were a lot of gangsters she'd never seen. The top-tier guys didn't get down to street level very often, and Steph didn't get to do those kinds of takedowns very often unless she had a clear, hot trail of accountability to follow.

The appointed hour for the meeting came and went, and Steph tried to tell herself that the last guy was being fashionably late. It wouldn't have been such a big deal, except he was the key to the whole thing. With Black Mask in jail and Gotham still recovering from the brawl between him and Red Hood, this was a _perfect_ time to unite all the gangs under one leader—a leader who was on Batman's payroll, at that. But now Matches Malone hadn't shown up, and Steph felt a terrible sinking in her gut. A whole bunch of bad guys in one place was either a consolidation … or a war. She had a limited amount of time to try to turn this all around, and very few options. Desperate, she ran toward the fire alarm. That might get them all out before this whole situation blew sky-high….

Someone spat an insult, someone else threw a punch, and someone _else_ waded in to either stop it or support their ally or take advantage of the opportunity. Steph actually had her hand on the fire-pull when the first gun was drawn, and the alarm blared loud enough to cover the first shot.

But not the second, or the third. And the shrieking fire alarm just meant they were all fighting each other to get outside, too. Not a chance in hell of containing it, so Steph called it in to Oracle as a gang war even as she got herself out of the way. "Oh, God," she groaned from the safety of the roof, watching it all fall apart right in front of her. This wasn't some one-off scuffle, people were _dying_, and there wasn't a damn thing she could do. She didn't have the training, or the damn _equipment_, to get down there and stop it. Not Spoiler all by herself…

…that was the problem, though, wasn't it? Little Spoiler, fired as Robin—hell, she wasn't really Robin, she was just Robin-_bait_ to get Tim back into his tights. Too dumb to hang up the cape when her own _boyfriend_ told her to stay out of the game. Too stubborn to take her licks and go home, so she had to show them all how good she really was. She had to take one of Batman's contingency plans and put it into effect, and she'd damn sure missed something because there was a three-block riot going on instead of turning 96% of Gotham's crime into a smoothly-running machine operating under Batman's control.

Steph's chest heaved, her breath hitching. It was her fault, all hers, and even if backup was coming, people were dying _now_. Bad people, but hell, the violence was gonna spill over any second, and then innocents would be in the line of fire.

Not enough training, not enough equipment, and backup on the way but from how far away? None of it mattered. This was her mistake. Spoiler jumped in.

…

The man woke up, knowing muzzily that he was in danger but not knowing where from. He tried to lunge to his feet, managing only a stumble-stagger, and flung one arm out for balance.

There was a weird crunching noise as he caught himself, and he looked toward his hand. A cold chill ran up his spine; he'd grabbed the corner of a brick wall, and crumbled it like soup crackers. With his metal hand.

_Metallo_. That was the name the scientist had given him. He could remember no other. But he could remember the outrage, that the scientist had maimed him, implanted some kind of _rock_ in his chest, turned him into a machine, all so he could kill Superman. Supposedly this stone that had taken the place of his heart was lethal to the Kryptonian, and all his kind.

The scientist had said he'd saved his life, given him a purpose. That had only made him angrier. How dare they play God with him? If it had just been the arm, maybe, but his heart, his actual _heart_, was gone. He had some radioactive rock powering his body and pumping his blood. And then there was his mind—he couldn't even remember his own damn _name_!

He could, however, remember grabbing the scientist by the throat. It had been too easy with his new arm, fragile tissue crushed in a second. And then running, running, out into the city, only stopping when he was exhausted. Collapsing here in an alley, falling asleep in his weariness, and now waking.

He'd never gotten the name of the bastard who'd done this to him, either.

Well, that was a place to start. A purpose. Find whoever had arranged this—it couldn't be just one man, not with this kind of tech—and make them _pay_.


	32. Struggling For Purchase

First off, thank you EVERYONE who reviewed here and also messaged me to pass on prayers and wishes. I actually came home and cried over a few. With how jaded this world gets at time, it really touches you to realize just how many people wish good things for you and love you. We're so very, very blessed to have you guys as friends and readers and know that we loved all of you back. Thank you so much for how much you stick by us. Believe me when I say that it honestly means so much. :D

Anissa's back is back to 100% and we're back to work on the writing. This is a relief because I've been miserable without the writing. That's the thing; I find I get really depressed and trapped in my own head when I can't tap into my imagination. Things get miserable and hard and depressing? I have to plot and plan to get out of my funk. That said, it's been a rough month.

Also in the good, the FIL survived the surgery that everyone expected to either kill him or turn him into a vegetable. Which, when you consider that he was going to flat die if we didn't do the surgery, the choice was clear. Well, a week later, he's mostly coherent, is on a pureed diet [he was NPO for a week, so this is great], can get to the toilet on his own, and is being able to sit up in a chair for short periods. So bless all of you that said prayers and sent those wonderful vibes; we obviously have strong friends because it worked. Next up, maybe next week, is a stint in rehab. Anissa and I are out of the house at least 10 hours a day and, with how weak he is right now and the amount of falls he had in the 32 hours before we made him go to the hospital, there isn't any other question. We not going to have had him defy death that closely, only to have it happen again a few weeks later. We want him to have the best shot possible and that means live-in rehab for a few weeks. He won't exercise on his own and we can't be here to watch him and the expense of a nurse isn't an option. So we love him enough that he's going. Keep your fingers crossed that we keep progressing at this level.

A few issues going on at work, but that will even itself out. It always does.

Enjoy, all! Welcome back!

* * *

><p>Jason and Cassie were lying on the roof at her mom's house, watching a meteor shower and more or less oblivious to everything else in the world. It was easy to feel like everything was a few thousand miles away, when it <em>was<em>—they were in Gateway City north of Santa Maria, and real life was very much on the East Coast. Helena Sandsmark had gone out for the evening just after they'd all had dinner together, with only a half-teasing, "Don't wreck the house, kids," in the way of admonishment. Considering that they hadn't spoken for several days, and hadn't really seen each other in a couple weeks, it wouldn't have been surprising if they'd ended up in Cassie's bed. But they were out here, under the open sky, Cassie curled up to his side and both of them staring at the stars instead of each other.

It was good to have her company again. Jason hadn't realized it until Kala pointed it out the other day, but he'd been kind of stuck in a rut. Navel-gazing, focusing only on what was wrong, barely giving enough of his attention to school to keep from getting behind. Heck, he hadn't even stared up at the night sky in so long, he'd almost forgotten about the meteor shower. Cassie had to remind him—_Jason_, the cosmology nerd, forgetting something as obvious as this.

"You ever wish on a meteor?" Jason asked quietly.

"When I was a kid," Cassie replied in the same hushed voice. "I wished I could meet my dad. Of course then he turns out to be a Greek god, and kind of a jerk, too. What about you?"

A little laugh hitched in his chest. "Same thing. I made up all these stories … he was a fireman who died saving a bunch of kids, and Mom couldn't bear to tell us. Or he was a secret agent who couldn't have a family because it would blow his cover. Kid stuff. Funny, I never did get around to superhero. Kala figured that out before I did."

Jason felt more than heard Cassie chuckle in response. "Well, you _did _say she tells people she's the smart one."

He made a scoffing noise at that. "Yeah, right. She's a sister, and a _little_ sister. They're put on this Earth to be annoying little brats."

Cassie elbowed him, lightly. "The genius brother said, to the little-sister-by-adoption of both Wonder Woman and Troia. Smooth move, Jase."

"That doesn't count. Same reason Kristin is cool. You only gain aggravation-related superpowers if you're born a younger sibling." As easily as he replied, Jason had felt her take care in elbowing him just then, and it made him stifle a sigh. Not that long ago he and Cassie could happily rough-house, but now she had to be careful. He was just another fragile human, now.

It wasn't that it bothered him that his girlfriend was stronger than he was; Jason wasn't that shallow. He certainly wasn't ashamed that someone was stronger than him, _especially_ not that a girl was. After all, he knew perfectly well that the strongest person in his immediate family was Mom, all five-foot-five of her, with only sarcasm and stubbornness for superpowers. Heck, even when he'd _had_ his powers, Cassie could still trounce him about half the time when they sparred.

It was just that she had to be careful, now, where once they had they been each other's refuge from a world that could be too breakable.

"Hey. Tall, dark, and nerdy." Cassie reached over and tapped his nose. "Looks like a lot of deep thoughts going through that head of yours."

"Not really. That's just how I look," Jason replied, and kissed her hair.

His father could've told him that the _worst_ thing anyone could do in a relationship was to stop talking about the things that bothered you.

…

Alarms shrilled all around him. The man called Metallo snarled under his breath. This was taking way too damned long! He threw a furious punch at the door of the bank vault, and finally felt it give.

He needed capital, that was the problem. Cash. Not knowing who he _was_ made things like applying for credit cards pretty damned impossible. And taking a job was completely out, even if he'd wanted to wait and save and slog through to his end goal. He had a big green fucking _glowing rock_ in his chest, like anybody could miss that.

So, bank robbery. No big deal, the banks robbed people all the time. Forty dollar fee on a check that bounced by ten cents, and if you didn't pay it back in a week they hit you with another fee. Lying, thieving bastards, they could stand to lose it, and he could put it to better use than they could.

But luck wasn't with him, and the bank he picked had alarms all over the place, and he knew the cops were coming. This was supposed to be quick, sneak up in the middle of the night, use the strength in his cursed metal arm to get through any lock he couldn't pick, grab the cash and bolt. Smash and grab, yeah, but he didn't want anything more complicated than that. No tellers, no hostages, no witnesses, no _drama_.

Now he had drama. Lots of it. Sirens in the distance. Another furious blow to the vault door, and it bent in a big crease. That let him grab an edge and haul it back enough to squeeze through. Stacks of cash just waiting for him, and he scraped them into the bag he'd brought. Rushing now, sirens outside getting closer, and it was a damn good thing that whatever they'd done to him made him stronger and faster overall, because he was gonna need it.

"You must be new in town," a jovial voice said from outside the vault, and his heart sank. _Busted_.

But then he turned around, and saw the caped silhouette, and remembered for the hundredth time that he didn't _have_ a heart anymore. He bared his teeth in a feral grin. "I didn't come here to fight with you. Just making a quick withdrawal here, no concern of yours. The bank has more than they need."

"Unfortunately, it _is_ my concern," the hero answered. "It's not the bank that will suffer, it's the people whose money that was. Put down the bag and come out here."

"Better come in and get me," Metallo growled. He shifted the cash bag to his left hand, and flexed his right. For the first time that alien limb felt smooth, powerful, _wonderful_. The Man of Steel seemed awfully eager to add himself to the list of Metallo's enemies, so fine, let him do it. Let him have a taste of this radiation, this _kryptonite_. "Come right on in and get me, Supes. _If_ you can."

…

Trying to intervene in a riot hadn't been one of Steph's best ideas. She knew _that_ much even though her head felt like it had been stuffed with cotton wool. Damp, gross, mildewed cotton wool, at that. She blinked—or tried to. Despite the protection of her Spoiler cowl, her right eye was swollen shut. _Damn_, she thought, and tried to sit up.

A hand on her shoulder stopped her, and Steph exploded into action. She'd been taught too well by crime-fighters and life itself not to let anyone hold her down. Unfortunately, when she tried to grab the other person's wrist and yank them across her body in a joint lock, all the muscles she was trying to use basically phoned in sick for work. All she managed was a spastic twitch.

"Shh, you're okay," a woman's voice murmured. Low and soothing, but Steph didn't necessarily trust that. She tried to blink her good eye clear and look up, seeing a dark shape with pointed ears.

"_Batgirl_?" she managed to whisper. Cass tended to show up just in time to save Steph's bacon, but last she heard the other girl was out of the country. And on whispering the name, she discovered that her throat was raw, a result of shouting at bystanders to get the hell out of the way—and at bad guys to back the hell off unless they wanted a face full of boot.

The laugh in reply was throaty and full of amusement. "No, I'm no bat. Now sit up slowly so your head won't spin … there, that's it. How do you feel, kitten?"

Steph's eye finally focused after she rubbed it, and she realized the costume the woman wore definitely wasn't Bat-material. In fact, it was decidedly slinky, and around her waist was coiled a tail—no, a _whip_. That, and the purring tone, and the nickname, all clued Steph in at last. (Hey, she never claimed to be the best detective on the block; that was Robin's job.) "You're that … you're Catwoman," she blurted, almost saying _cat burglar_ but quickly deciding it would've been impolite. Instead she went with the moniker the media had applied to the master thief who'd been plaguing the Gotham jewel district.

"That's me," the other woman purred, a glint of green eyes behind the mask. "And you're Spoiler, in case you were wondering."

"Yeah, thanks, I remember who I am," Steph said, managing a rusty chuckle. She pressed one hand to her forehead and winced, immediately regretting it. "Where are we?"

"One of my safehouses," Catwoman replied. A tabby cat had jumped into her lap, seemingly out of nowhere. A white one was sniffing interestedly at Steph's boots. "It's just a minor concussion, you should be fine. The rest are just bruises and scrapes. I got you away before they could start kicking. What were you _doing_, trying to break up a riot all by yourself?"

There was absolutely no reason why Steph should trust this woman. She was a thief, she'd driven her claws straight through Batman's gauntlet when he tried to capture her, she lived on the wrong side of the law. But she was being nice, she'd rescued Steph, and she sounded genuinely concerned, not scolding. So somehow it came tumbling out without a second thought.

"Because I started it, that riot was my fault," Steph said, and her voice broke a little. Her shoulders shook and she tried to hold it back.

Catwoman cocked her head, mouth turned down in confusion. "You _started_ it?"

"Not on purpose. I was trying … trying to prove something to Batman … I set up one of _his_ plans and it was all going perfect … but then the one guy I needed most didn't show up and they all turned on each other…." Putting her hands to her face, Steph squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to sob and failing. "It all went to hell and people _died_ and I'm the one to blame. I screwed up so, so bad … you shoulda just left me there." _Perpetual screw-up, I'll never be good enough for anybody—well, nobody worth it, I was good enough for a sleaze like Dean but look where __**that**__ got me. Never gonna be a hero, not even a damn __**sidekick**__, just the stupid girl tagging along after them all._

A gentle hand on her hair, then the couch she'd been lying on moved as Catwoman sat down beside her. Without a word, she tugged Steph over so her head was resting on the woman's shoulder. "Listen, kitten, there's only three things I'm completely sure about in this life. One, nobody's perfect, and anyone who says they are is hiding some serious issues from everybody including themselves. Two, you gotta look out for yourself, because no one else will. And three, you can't prove _anything_ to Batman that he doesn't want to see."

That advice, and the complete lack of judgment that came with it, made Steph break down completely. She wept for the people who'd gotten hurt today, the ones who'd died, even the bad guys. And for herself, for the bald fact that no, she never would be good enough for Batman. Maybe not even for Red Robin.

Eventually her sobs died down to sniffles, and Steph rubbed at her face. She was all gross from crying, but Catwoman didn't seem to care. "Let it go," she said softly.

There was a cat in Steph's lap now, kneading her armored thigh and purring. Actually, a couple of them were purring, a rumble of comfort just within the range of Steph's hearing. It would be nice to be like them, concerned only with the needs and delights of the moment, unabashedly selfish and unashamedly sensual creatures. No concept of justice, no need for acceptance, perfect little self-sufficient predators just charming enough that people would take care of their every need and leave them more time for sleeping in the sun.

"I can't let it go," Steph whispered, scrubbing the tears from her eyes. Self-pity wasn't a particularly strong part of her character, and unlike the average cat, she had a strong sense of justice. "It's my mistake. I have to do what I can to fix it."

Catwoman arched a brow at her, the gesture clear despite her cowl. "Says who?"

Steph could only blink. "Huh?"

"Who says you have to fix it? If everyone had to fix their own mistakes, politicians wouldn't have time to do much else. No one's going to make you go back there, not when you almost got killed. No one would expect you to." Something in those green eyes said Selina was testing her, just a little, more curious about what she'd said than espousing a personal philosophy.

"_I_ say, and that's all that matters," Steph replied. "No one has to make me do it. I couldn't look at myself in the mirror if I just slunk off and let Batman handle it for me." With that she picked up the cat in her lap and set it gently on the table, standing up. The cat, of course, strolled indolently away as if it had just been about to get up anyway. Turning to her host, Steph smiled. "Thanks for taking care of me."

Catwoman looked up at her and shook her head. "It figures."

"What does?" Steph asked, curiosity infecting her, too.

The woman's grin was decidedly catlike in its amusement. "You feel like you have to be responsible and make it right, no matter what. Figures the first _interesting_ person in this town besides the Bat himself turns out to be a _dog person_."

…

Superman sighed. There were parts of his job that he loved. Saving lives was the brightest, shortly followed by seeing the wonder in someone's gaze when he swooped down and made things right. There were other parts of it that he liked a lot. Who wouldn't enjoy standing still with his arms crossed and making quippy one-liners at bad guys whose bullets just ricocheted harmlessly off?

However, very few things in life were purely fun, and even superhero had its downsides as an occupation. While failing to break a huge story on the front page of the _Daily Planet_ was a disappointment, failing to rescue someone in time was orders of magnitude worse. The toll of people _almost_ saved, disasters _almost_ averted, haunted Kal-El like nothing else. Only Lois' dogged faith in him kept him sane over the years—that, and the way the twins looked up to him.

Somewhere in the middle were the tedious tasks, like this. A bank robber, none too skilled or professional, holed up in the vault and _daring_ him to come in. This one didn't seem to have any sense of the trouble he was in, and he hadn't even responded to the gentle humor which could once in a while defuse a standoff. Superman sighed and moved closer. "Let's not make this any more unpleasant than it has to be, all right?"

A nasty chuckle came from within the vault, and he hesitated. For the first time in a long time, Kal-El felt … worried. Something about that laugh, as if the robber knew something he didn't. He focused his x-ray vision through the wall, wanting a closer look at the man.

The metal arm got his attention, fast. Some kind of cyborg? Such enhancements tended to give great strength, along with a variety of other powers depending on how they'd been built. Kal-El hadn't heard of a cyborg on the East Coast in a while, though. That meant this guy really _was_ new in town, new to the overall capes-and-villains game. Maybe he just didn't know that his strength was nothing against the man he faced, maybe he wasn't aware that he was dealing with a Kryptonian.

But he'd called Kal-El 'Supes', so he _knew_ who he was up against. Superman's powers were extremely well-known. Schoolchildren all over the country claimed they wanted to be him when they grew up, so they could fly and catch falling planes and be invincible. So why was this one laughing under his breath in not-quite-sane glee at the prospect of facing a founding member of the Justice League of America, someone who had once lifted an _island_ into orbit?

Kal-El had just enough time to remember what that island had been made of before the robber got tired of waiting and rushed him.

…

All hell was breaking loose in Gotham, and Batman was well behind the breaking-point of it, trying desperately to catch up. It didn't help that Nightwing was benched due to injuries, or that Batgirl had inconveniently disappeared, or that Black Canary was in Star City with the Arrows.

He'd located the epicenter of the riot fairly quickly, and getting there was also harder than it should have been. Spoiler had been involved in this fight, and Red Robin was distracted, off his game, searching for her. Batman had to recall him to his duty several times, and he was nowhere near his usual effectiveness.

The violence was spilling over across town, criminals elsewhere taking opportunistic advantage of the situation. With the major organized crime _and_ Batman both preoccupied, they were having a field day. And only Huntress was free to combat them. He couldn't pay attention to that, focused on the situation in front of him and the steady stream of information Oracle was pouring into his comm unit. She was working double-duty tonight, providing support for himself and for Huntress.

They were stretched so thin that he caught himself wishing Red Hood had been in town. No, he couldn't let himself think that; the boy who had once been his pupil and a rare source of joy in his life had grown into a man who would see an all-too-easy solution to this. He would've fired gleefully into the thickest tangle of combat, mowing down gangsters left and right, and he probably would've given that old reckless laugh of his while he did it. The sound, deeper in tone now but still just as carefree, had sounded ghostly to Batman's ears when they faced each other last. Haunting and heartbreaking in equal measure.

Enough reminiscing, he was getting to be as unfocused as Robin. This block was more or less subdued, and Batman moved on to the next, where several members of the Falcone syndicate were engaged in a brutal battle of attrition against some of Two-Face's men. Batman prepared to lob a smoke pellet into their midst…

…only to see smoke already rising. He paused, wondering who else was in the thick of this. The men, all of whom had been in Gotham long enough to fear a Bat swooping down from the rooftops, looked up, momentarily forgetting their animosity toward each other. While their attention was up, and while Batman cloaked himself in shadow, the real assailant struck.

Spoiler. He had to admit, it was neat work, if terribly risky. She had brought down a pair of them before they even knew she was among them, and then the men were too confused to mount an appropriate defense. Half of them were down in under a minute. "Next sector," Batman said into the microphone concealed in his cowl. "Spoiler has this one under control."

As Robin squawked in surprise at the news of his girlfriend's reappearance, and Oracle directed them both, Batman thought for a moment that Stephanie Brown was doing very well, far better than he'd expected in a mess like this. Well enough that he didn't stop to wonder why she was there, why she was fighting with such determination. All he saw was someone he could trust to finish off a half-pacified fight.

If he'd known that she had a concussion and severely bruised ribs, he wouldn't have left that section to her alone.

…

This was not going according to plan. Kal-El knew that feeling of weakness all too well; he had already begun to sweat, and the muscle tremors weren't far behind. _Kryptonite_. The cyborg had it implanted in his chest, that sickly green glow making the Kryptonian nauseous as much from dread as from its actual effects. Deadly radiation, bleeding in through every pore, wrecking his invulnerability as it came. The sensible course of action would've been to retreat and regroup, but there was no backup in town other than the cops—and he couldn't let this maniac go tearing through them.

That metal fist looped toward his face, and Kal-El ducked. The blow crashed into the wall, ripping out a chunk of concrete, and the cyborg caught him on the backswing. _Rao_, he was strong! It had been a long time since Kal-El had been lifted off his feet by a punch, and the robber whooped with unbridled glee.

Time to stop this. Kal-El drove a solid punch squarely at the arm. Kryptonite didn't erase his powers, so he still had strength, though his balance was off thanks to the vertigo it sent swimming through his brain. The blow was decisive, and flung the cyborg to the ground, stunning him unconscious.

He had to get out of the immediate range of the kryptonite. Kal-El staggered outside to see flashing lights on the cop cars. "Stand aside," he called. "This man is extremely…"

…_dangerous_, was how he meant to finish the sentence, but that was when the cyborg leapt on him from behind and crashed both of them into the nearest police cruiser.

…

"What the fuck was that?" Robb yelped. Kala, whose hearing was much better than his even after four hours in the recording studio singing her lungs out, knew it was a car crash of some kind. A heavy percussive _whump_ followed by the tinkling of shattered glass and metal shards. Given the hour, probably some drunk—or someone falling asleep behind the wheel, if she was going to be charitable.

A little twinge of responsibility way down in her soul tugged at her, but … it wasn't her job. It wasn't her place it get involved. Sure, she had a mask in the hidden pocket of her jacket, but the cops could handle a fender-bender, and Dad and Jason had the big stuff if it came to that.

Except no, not Jason. He had a date tonight, waiting on Wonder Girl to pick him up, and Kala had called him up just to serenade him with Tupac's _California Love_. She'd heard Cassie laughing in the background by the time she got to the refrain, and Jason hung up in despair at the mockery. Jason was in Gateway with Cassie, and without his powers there was no way Lizardboy could flea-hop his way over here. Even if he could, again, no powers. At best he'd be a bystander with first aid training.

The boys were still muttering about it, giving Robb hell for having been so spooked. Kala shrugged her bag a little higher on her shoulder, thinking of nothing more than going home and getting some rest. It was been a very long day, her head felt as if it was going to split in half…

And then she noticed people trotting briskly toward the noise. It was Morgan who called, "What's going on?"

Someone turned around and replied, "Superman's fighting somebody about ten blocks over! We wanna see!"

That quickly, the tension headache was gone, dread and a creeping worry settling in.

"_Estupido pendejo_," Sebast growled, even as Ned and Robb started to drift along with the current. They should have known better; this was both boys first year in Metropolis and they had yet to see her father, the resident superhero, in person. And that was just the way she wanted to keep it, from the sounds of things. Kala snatched at Ned's shirt, and Morgan grabbed Robb's arm.

Sebast noticed that, and glared at them. "_Ay_, what are you, a couple _jibaros_? This is Metropolis, you'll see it on TV tonight. We don't wanna get any closer to a fight with someone who gets damn cars and shit thrown at him!"

Point. Speaking of which, the damn feeling wouldn't go away. It was going to be a pain to get close enough to check up, but she couldn't help worrying. Dad was more than capable of fighting his own battles, had for years, but Jason being out of commission changed up the current situation. It was likely routine, some moron in a firefly costume holding up some snooty mid-town restaurant at closing time or something, but still…

Postponing even as she gave herself an out, she reached for her phone. If all else failed, there was likely someone that would appreciate the update, even if she had to page someone to cover it. "I probably ought to call Mom, so she can get the ball rolling," Kala said, listening in out of habit. She had no business getting involved when she should be staying her nose of caped-community business all together, but this was Dad. This was different. And then her spine turned to ice as she heard her father groan in pain. The last time she'd heard him hurting like that…

It took all of thirty seconds to make up her mind, prepared or not. If Dad sounded that bad, something was wrong. This wasn't routine. Nothing about that sound was routine.

Robb was looking at Sebast, who explained, "Her mom is Lois Lane. Superman's chronicler? If she doesn't already know about this, she needs to."

Kala's mind was already in Blur-mode, ten blocks away and planning. Ignoring Robb's sudden dawning of perception, she touched Sebast's arm and kissed his cheek. "My reception is crap—get the newbies home so they don't hurt themselves. I'll call from inside the studio, okay, _papi_?"

Even as she said it and he nodded his answer, even as she turned to scurry inside, she was already cursing herself for an idiot for what she was about to do.

"Stay safe," Morgan called back as she disappeared.

_If only._

…

He'd heard _unknown assailant_ one too many times. "My _name_ is _Metallo_!" he roared, forgetting that it was not a name he'd chosen, forgetting that he'd lost the name he'd lived under. Hell, he could almost forgive that bastard scientist—this was one hell of a rush! Kicking _Superman's_ ass, getting beaten up in the process but he was steadily pounding that smug do-gooder face in, and it felt oh-so-righteous. He'd forgotten the money, but what did it matter? This was too much damn fun.

Superman got up again. He didn't seem to know when to quit. Metallo grinned and rolled his shoulders. He had an audience now, cops who'd figured out that firing on him was useless, and he meant to show off for them. "How come you don't just stay down?" he growled, bearing in on the hero.

Pain-glazed blue eyes locked on his, and there was ferocious determination behind them. "And let you win so you can terrorize this city? Not on my watch." With that, he broke out a new attack, his gaze flaring red. Metallo cried out and dove aside, grabbing at his metal arm. He'd actually _melted _part of it … and that had _hurt_, dammit, how did he have that kind of feeling in the damn thing?!

"Had about enough of you," he muttered, ripping a telephone pole out of the sidewalk and turning, raising it above his head. One mighty smack, and he'd smashed everyone's favorite hero like a bug. Like a damn spider.

Metallo was laughing, seeing the pale shocked looks on so many faces; even at this hour, people had gathered to watch a little Metropolis street theater. "So that's your Man of Steel, huh? Not anymore, boys and girls." He flexed the arm, streetlights gleaming on it. "I'm the _new_ Man of Tomorrow, and—"

The next thing Metallo knew, he was sitting up in a building half a mile down the street.

…

She had to loop up, high, to get the distance needed to accelerate, and this prick was gloating. _Gloating_. Hell no, that didn't fly, but Kala did, and she was moving at three times the speed of sound when she hit him. The recoil from the blow staggered her, dropped her clean out of the air to tumble along the sidewalk, but the cyborg disappeared from view.

Kala swung to her feet, keenly aware that she was in _plainclothes_, just a domino and a hastily-utilized skull cap over her hair to hide her identity. Thank God it was dark and she was in mostly black. Much to her shock, she wobbled when she stood up, her stomach churning. Wasn't the headache back. Fear? Adrenaline? That could do it, realizing it had to be _her_ who saved Dad's bacon, that Jase wasn't coming and couldn't come. She turned toward her father, worried and wondering why he was struggling with this one.

With a glance, she understood why she'd felt so worried. There had to be something more to what she was seeing. He was bloody and beaten, definitely not the normal way of things, but he threw off the telephone pole and stepped shakily out of the hole his body had made in the pavement. Kala saw his eyes go wide when he saw her, and he exclaimed, "You don't need to be here!"

_Uh, apparently I do, from the looks of things_. _No time for me worrying about screwing up or you being protective. Help me here, Dad. What's going on? _"Looks like you could use some backup, Superman." That was good, remembering not to call him Dad, and he blinked at her. Kala just looked at him pleading, torn.

_I don't like it any more than you do, Daddy. I know the consequences if they get a clue that we're connected, but I couldn't not help. Not when this has to be magic or something else that trips you up. This guy's doing a number on you. Jason's not here, he can't be here. Just this once, let me help._

His expression changed to horror just as she felt the wave of nausea and weakness hit her. "_Watch out!_" he shouted, and Kala's knees went weak. Only one thing made her sick like that…

…she turned slowly, and this time it wasn't Luthor coming after her father with a chunk of kryptonite. It was some kind of cyborg, metal gleaming beneath torn skin at his shoulder, one arm completely metal. And in the center of his chest something gleamed a dull, nauseating green. The bunker, the stunning pain of that radioactive rock, all of it came back the painful life. So did the memory of how she'd survived.

_Half-human,_ she thought, bracing herself for whatever came next. _Half-immune. And the last asshole who tried to kryptonite my dad, I fucking __**bit**__ him._ _And you're not even a tenth as scary as some of the monsters I've seen. Bring it, you bastard. _

Growling, more furious than scared, Kala leapt for the sky. Her equilibrium was off, but she got enough distance to snatch up a motorcycle and pitch it at the ass. Perfect, a combination of good aim and good luck, and the bike hit him in a beautiful pile-drive. "She shoots, she scores!" Kala crowed as the sidewalk cracked beneath Metallo, and then she realized her father was swaying on his feet. God, how long had this gone on before she and the band had heard the crash? Panic choked her heart, love and fear overcoming her rage, and she dove toward him.

Speed, always, speed and flight her two most cherished powers, and before she knew she meant to do it Kala had grabbed her father around the waist and was bolting for the horizon. Not yet midnight, so her best bet was westward, chasing the sunset.

Dad tried to speak, but she held on tight and opened up a new notch of speed. He was so much heavier than Kala ever would've guessed, heavier even than Jase. The way she flew, they were over the Pacific and in the fading sun within minutes. Golden radiance chased the chill of kryptonite from her bones, and her father's wounds began to mend as she watched.

"We have to go back," he said hoarsely.

"It's okay, Daddy, we have time. We have time. I got him. You just charge," Kala soothed, trying to smile with reassurance. "He's down. We only need a few minutes, that's all. You can't fight like this."

"No," he managed to croak out. "Tried the same thing, with a truck. He got up. Kala, we have to go back."

The enormity of the mistake hit her like a ton of bricks. "Oh, _shit_," she whispered, miserable. At least he could fly on his own, and they both streaked back to Metropolis, Kala furious at her own oversight. Jason wouldn't have been so thoughtless. Thinking straight in a crisis had never been her strong suit; this was a perfect example. Too ruled by emotion. She shouldn't have left that guy there, who knew how many civilians he'd killed, _this_ was why she didn't do the hero gig! This was why Jase had to get his damn powers back before she fucked up the whole legacy.

But when they stopped to hover well above the scene, the cyborg was already gone, taking his radioactive heart with him. A chance at an open-and-shut on this one, ice-cold. Kala took a deep breath, and closed her eyes in despondent frustration. _And these are the reasons Jor-El was right. I'm the loose cannon._ _Better mostly benched._ "I'm sorry, Daddy," she said in a tiny voice.

He reached out and clasped her shoulder. It hurt to look at him, but she made herself do it. It always was after she'd royally screwed-up. "Don't be. You got us both to safety, Kala. He got away, but we stopped him from hurting anyone else." His smile was full of gratitude … and worry. Kala knew why.

There was a kryptonite-based villain loose in Metropolis now. Sooner or later, there had to be a showdown.


	33. Won't See Me Closing In

I should apologize for the delay in this guy, but it's been a rough two weeks and we just didn't have the strength for this last week. So we did a thorough re-read and are locked in for everything that comes next. Hopefully it will be worth the effort. We also have ten days off coming up, so that'll also give us a chance to stream-line. ;)

* * *

><p>Perry White narrowed his eyes at the man sitting across the table from him. Lean, tanned, fit, with smile lines showing at the corners of his eyes, he looked like someone who was perfectly content with his life. And that was at odds with the statement he'd just made. "So how come you hate your dream job all of a sudden?" Perry asked, scowling.<p>

His nephew Richard took another bite of his steak, chewing and swallowing before he answered. "Well, the management's been swapping things around for a while. Used to be as long as I got in my monthly quota of articles, I could come in whenever I wanted. Now they want us punching time cards and working eight hours. Then some idiot decided it'd be a great idea to browse porn on the company computer, and of course the network picked up a virus that took it down for two days. So now our system's also locked down so you can't even check the weather on the company's machine without putting in an access code."

That earned him a scoffing laugh—Perry couldn't imagine imposing those kinds of restrictions on even his Features department. Creative people functioned best with some freedom, and newshounds had to be let off leash to run properly. "Your boss is a damned idiot," he growled.

"Tell me about it. But hey, I have to have a job. Otherwise I'd get bored. You're not hiring, by any chance, are you?"

Perry chuckled richly. Of course this was the real reason Richard had wanted to go to dinner on a day when Theo just _happened_ to be unavailable. Too worn out from golfing, apparently, a sport which utterly confounded Perry and which he thought of as a sort of disease his brother had acquired while living in Florida. At least the fact that Theo had been out there in ugly shorts whacking a tiny ball across a big lawn meant that he was adjusting to the new normal in his life. And Richard sniffing about after a job meant he was adjusting, too. Ever since his mother's death he had seemed shell-shocked, but in the last few days his keen sense of humor was coming back. "What makes you think I'd hire someone who already quit on me once?" Perry asked him.

"I quit to keep the peace at the office, and I gave you plenty of notice," Richard pointed out. "Besides, you know I'm an asset, and you know I already get along with your management. You don't have to worry about healthcare, since I've got Tricare. Heck, I won't even sweat you for the salary I deserve."

The older man had a biting retort about _deserved_ salary on the tip of his tongue, but he didn't say it. His heart picked that moment to go into a lurching gallop, and Perry rubbed his chest, wincing. His pulse steadied within a few seconds; these occasional palpitations had been showing up sporadically, but his EKGs were still looking good—well, good for someone who'd had a massive coronary fourteen years ago—so it wasn't an issue. His cardiologist was keeping a close eye on the condition. As long as it didn't come with pain, weakness, a feeling of pressure or tightness in the chest, or sudden weight gain, it was probably just part of getting older.

The five or ten seconds it last, though, was long enough to alarm Richard. "Uncle Perry? You all right?" In that moment he looked like his boyhood self again, wide-eyed with concern.

"I'm fine," Perry said brusquely. The one thing he couldn't stand was being hovered over like an invalid, though he had to cut Richard some slack considering how suddenly he'd lost his mother. "Just the thought of giving you what _you_ think you deserve gave my heart a lurch. You really feel like coming home to the _Planet_, huh?"

"It _is_ home, you know. Most of my friends and family are there, and I visit all the time." He shrugged one shoulder, but his blue eyes were watchful, and Perry cursed his heart's timing. Damn thing would go and get his nephew all worried; he'd be lucky if he and Loueen didn't try to talk him into giving up caffeine. Again.

"What's your wife think?" Perry asked.

At that, Richard grinned again—just as Perry had planned. Bringing up Lana was always a sure way to distract him. "She thinks she'll only have to make one stop to bring lunch to all her favorite people. Lana loves an excuse to drop by the paper."

Perry snorted at that. "She doesn't need one, she still owns almost a quarter of it. At least she lets me do my job." He picked up his sandwich and bit into it, chewing thoughtfully. They both knew he would say yes, eventually—Richard was right, nephew or not, he was too good a reporter to let him keep languishing at the _Aviation Journal_. That was like Mickey Mantle sticking to the minor leagues, for crying out loud. That he'd stuck with it this long privately amazed Perry, but then, Richard did love his planes.

After a long moment, he continued, "You know you'd have to go through the whole hiring process like anyone else. And I couldn't give you a plum job right off. You'd be in the City bullpen, most likely. It's not just the nepotism thing, it's being married to a shareholder."

"Yeah, but I already know how to take orders from your assistant editor in City, so that'll be fine," Richard joked.

Perry cut him an arch look. "Last I checked, you _didn't_ take those orders all too well." Richard just shrugged. Then again, much as Lois had loved him, in the end she and Richard had turned out to be too much alike to make a marriage work. Which is why they'd married into Smallville, both of them, something that had baffled Perry at the time. It worked for them, though.

Pretending to deliberate further, he finally gave a heavy sigh. "What the hell, Lane needs someone in her department who's not afraid of talking to her before her second coffee. Send your resume through HR."

"Thanks, Uncle Perry," Richard said, and his eyes gleamed with mischief. "Or maybe I should start calling you Chief, since I'm working for you and all."

"Yeah, wouldn't want people to know I'm related to you," Perry retorted, and both of them laughed.

…

Text messages were traceable, so Tim used them sparingly. But he _did_ know Steph in and out of the cowl, so it wasn't suspicious to send her a quick message asking if she'd made it home all right. The last he'd seen her, she was mopping up a fight, handily dispatching her opponents. Everything should've been okay … but she hadn't come looking for him after the riot finally fizzled, and she usually did.

There was no immediate answer, which didn't really worry him. Or so he told himself. Sometimes Steph couldn't reply instantly. She did have homework, and her mom was watching over her on the alert for any caped crusades. Crystal Brown worried a great deal about her daughter's safety, not without reason. And beyond that, it was perfectly reasonable to assume Steph was simply _asleep_ at this house and not answering her phone.

He still worried. Tim sent another message ten minutes later, and when that got no response, he slipped out of the Batcave while Bruce was still analyzing the night's events and made his way to the Brown residence. Steph's bedroom window was unlocked; that meant she was probably still out. But Oracle wasn't reporting her active, and Tim hadn't seen her after the fight. He hoped she had only forgotten to lock her window, and eased it open to step into her room. "Stephanie?" he called softly. The comforter on her bed was rumpled enough that she _could_ have been lying there…

…but she wasn't, as Tim discovered when he pulled the comforter back. Steph was still out there, and his stomach dropped with queasy foreboding.

The lights abruptly came on then, and Tim dropped into fighting stance, a batarang in one hand. Mrs. Brown stood in the doorway, having just flipped the light switch, and her eyes were hard and haggard. "_You_," she spat. "I knew it. She said she was giving it up, but _no_, she never could. Not while you were still out there playing dress-up. Where the hell is she, Robin?"

Tim straightened up, knowing he was flushing with embarrassment. He might be Red Robin, he might be partnered with the best and bravest hero in Gotham City, but somehow Steph's mother made him feel guilty. For all sorts of things. "I don't know, Mrs. Brown," he said in his calmest and most professional voice. "I was looking for Stephanie myself."

"You don't _know_?" He realized an awful thing then, as her voice cracked on the last word. Mrs. Brown wasn't angry, she was terrified. "My baby girl is out there in the middle of a _riot_ with all you madmen, and _you __**lost**__ her_?!"

There was no point in saying that he and Batman had both tried to discourage Steph from putting on the Spoiler costume. No point in saying that she wasn't his responsibility, that he'd been at Batman's side taking care of the worst of the fighting while she cleaned up the fringes. No point in any of it. So far as Mrs. Brown was concerned, it was his fault that Stephanie had gone missing.

It didn't help that Tim agreed with her.

"I'll find her," he promised, and vaulted out the window. An easy tumble on the lawn, and he was on the comm before he'd even cleared the property. "We have a problem."

…

Jason didn't use his trust fund much, with most of his school expenses taken care of, so when he overheard the news of the fight with Metallo while his roommate was watching television, he saved the paper he was typing and switched to his browser. A couple of minutes searching found what he was looking for, and he made the transaction quickly. "Hey, can you make sure Gazeera has water tomorrow if I don't make it back first thing in the morning?" he asked.

"Sure," his roommate replied, looking only a little curious. "What's going on?"

"Family stuff," Jason answered, stowing the laptop. "I've gotta get to Metropolis tonight. I'll be back tomorrow to feed Gazeera, but I don't want him running out of water." With that, he grabbed his wallet and headed out the door at a jog. He didn't have much time if he was going to catch the train.

It was one thing to hear that Superman and the mysterious Blur were not significantly injured in the fight. He had to see for himself, and it never occurred to him to just _call_ either of them.

…

Trying to intervene in a riot—_again_—really hadn't been one of Steph's best ideas. As a matter of fact it was currently edging out the competition for Worst Idea Ever. That title normally belonged to her completely moronic choice to let Dean get in her pants, which had cost her far too much even if the guy himself was mostly a footnote in her mind these days. Somewhere in the world was a little girl who didn't know her mommy fought crime … but who probably had a whole lot better chance in life than said teen mom did. Even now, giving up her daughter was a hole in Steph's heart that had scabbed over but never quite healed.

Second billing usually went to agreeing to take the mantle of Robin. She'd been a placeholder for Tim, that was all, bait to get him back into the cape. And it had worked, too. She should've listened to her mother—and Tim, and Batman, and everyone else practically—and just given up. Burned the Spoiler costume with last fall's leaves and been done with it.

Steph just … couldn't. People needed help, and she could give it. Maybe not as good as the rest of them, but she made a difference. She'd _seen _it. And maybe once her head stopped ringing she'd let herself rest and let those oh-so-much-better caped crusaders take over the fight. Getting knocked unconscious twice in one night was no good for her.

She tried to open her eyes, wondering who had saved her this time … and gradually realized that she couldn't feel her arms. Steph blinked, and raised her head, wondering how she was standing up when she'd been unconscious.

Only she wasn't standing, she was hanging from cuffed wrists, and that was why she couldn't feel her arms.

"Oh, shit," Steph muttered.

Bad things happened to heroes. That wasn't news. Steph had been threatened, beaten up, and kidnapped (once by her own dad), and a couple times the bad guys had tried to kill her. None had succeeded, and even during the other stuff she hadn't felt like she was in a huge amount of _danger_. Well, not most of the time. There was always Batman or Batgirl or Robin on the way. Plus the people who tried to hurt her often underestimated her, and that worked to Steph's advantage. Especially as Robin—the bad guys were too busy laughing at a blonde Robin with boobs, and they let down their guard enough for her to get her licks in.

Now, though, she was scared. After standing up and moving her arms rhythmically within the limits of the cuffs, she got enough feeling back to try working on escaping. First she took stock of her situation. The cuffs were welded to a chain that ran up to a high ceiling somewhere in the darkness overheard. She was nauseous from the blow to her head, and aching all over from the fight earlier and hanging unconscious by her wrists. Her kit was gone, including the lock-picks normally stashed in her gauntlets. She just had her costume itself and her wits.

After a few moments, Steph realized why this situation frightened her so much. It wasn't being held captive, it wasn't waking up alone in a big dark room and having to wonder what the bad guys wanted. It was a small detail: the welded cuffs. Someone had taken the time and trouble to _weld_ a set of steel handcuffs to a chain. That meant they used this setup a lot, and didn't want any chance of someone slipping away.

It meant this might've been an unplanned capture, but whoever had her had done this before.

Steph shook her hands, rattling the chain. When in doubt, she always picked bravado as her default option. "Hey! Anybody there? I'm getting' kinda bored here!"

Only the echoes of her own voice answered her. And an unpleasant question in the back of her mind. _If they took my kit, I wonder if they're smart enough to remove the locator chip in it? How's Oracle or Robin gonna find me?_

…

"Metallo, huh?" Lois' eyes blazed. "Sonofabitch. And he was robbing a bank?"

"I know, right? Freaking cyborg arm and kryptonite heart, and he uses it for grand larceny." Kala sounded more casual and flippant than she felt. Her heart was still racing, more from seeing Dad hurt than kryptonite exposure. He was still searching for any sign of Metallo, but they all knew it was a lost cause.

"It doesn't make any damn sense." Lois paced, furious, occasionally raking her hands through her hair. Kala remembered seeing her like this quite often when she was little and Mom was hot under the collar over a story. The only thing missing was the ever-present cigarette from those days; Lois had cut her smoking down to almost nothing.

Kala took another bite of the leftover pizza that had been in the fridge when she dropped in. Since she was eating, Bagel and Chewie had glued themselves to her feet, and she didn't dare glance downward for fear of falling prey to the irresistible cute of two mournful-eyed hounds. "I wish I hadn't flown off so fast."

At that her mother stopped and turned the full intensity of those hazel eyes on her. Some of the effect was diminished by the fact that Kala could see that same steely take-no-prisoners stare just by glancing in a mirror. Not much, though. "No, you did the right thing. It's _kryptonite_. You had to get yourself and Kal-El out of there before you were overexposed to it."

And just the thought of extreme kryptonite exposure made her put down the pizza as her stomach did a slow barrel roll. Kala's nightmares had faded a little, mostly due to the insane amount of work she was doing for the label. Meetings with image consultants, stylists, PR people, and then trying to nail down the songs for the first album. There were some originals written by the band members, but the label was nudging them toward professional songwriters. All of it left her too tired to dream, most of the time. She thought tonight might be an exception to that rule.

Lois was still caught up in the problem Metallo presented. "I need to find out where this guy came from. There aren't many places that can do the cyborg work, and if he's from Cadmus … they're gonna regret crossing that line. Of course if he's from somewhere else we haven't heard of, that's a whole other problem."

"My money's on Luthor," Kala said dryly.

"It's not _always_ Luthor," Lois reminded her.

Kala scoffed, unaware that the sound and the expression on her face were a strong echo of Lois' own expression of disbelief. "Nah, just every time I think Dad and kryptonite and sneaky underhanded cowardly ways of getting the two together, somehow Luthor's name just automatically pops up in my head. Probably because he's a chicken-shit rat bastard with an axe to grind." Words she never would've said if Dad was home, and as it just so happened, a direct quote from Mom.

Lois stopped pacing long enough to rumple her daughter's hair. "That's my girl. I'm still pissed I didn't get to shoot that sonofabitch on the yacht all those years ago."

"I bet Aunt Maggie's glad you didn't," Kala pointed out.

This time she noticed the similarity, when Lois scoffed at her. "Your Aunt Maggie was the one who made sure to tell me Nevada was out of her jurisdiction, when we went after you."

And that was the first Kala had heard of that particular tidbit. She blinked; Maggie Sawyer didn't compromise her ethics for anyone. But if she'd as much as _told_ Lois to take a shot at Luthor….

Her mother saw the look on her face, and sighed. "This was after what happened to Lana, and after Giselle came _here_. Add all that to him taking you, and Maggie was pissed enough not to care anymore. I think she'd have shot him herself, if she got the chance, and damn the consequences."

"Luthor is _evil_," Kala said, almost blurting it out. "He's not misunderstood, he's not crazy, he's not misguided. He just wants _power_, and he wants Dad and all of us dead because we have a kind of power he never will. _Somebody_ ought to take him out."

"Don't go thinking it's you," Lois said in a sharp, cold voice. "Number one, he's _mine_. Number two, it's harder than you think, as lucky as he is. Number three, you don't need to take on that burden, too."

Kala quieted at that. She'd been off-kilter for months after the death of General Zod. It had been a necessary and justified killing, one not even her father could blame her for. Still … he had protected her from Luthor's thugs, and even though he was using her for his own ends, that had to count for something. Dru-Zod had _rescued_ her, and she'd killed him.

Her mother tousled her hair again, more roughly, and she pulled away with a complaining noise. "Hey. I know that look. Let it go, Kala. You can't change the past."

"No, but I can learn from it. And maybe I won't make the same mistakes again."

Lois blew an annoyed breath out through her nose. "For all the Lois Lane 2.0 jokes, sometimes you are _so_ much like your father."

That, at least, made her smile. "Super-guilt, the least-known Kryptonian power. Gotcha, Mom. I'll dial it back. Although maybe I'll write a song about Luthor or something. We can call it therapy—and it's cheaper than Dr. Marrin."

"Good. If you call quote me in the lyrics, I want credit for it." The devilish gleam in Lois' eyes reminded Kala just where her drive and determination came from. Lois continued, "You finish scarfing up the last of the pizza, I'm going out."

"…out?" Kala said, with the pizza halfway to her mouth. It was late enough that that was unusual.

"Like I'd leave the night desk to cover this. I want to see the scene of the crime," Lois insisted. "Relax, it'll be crawling with cops, I'll be fine."

"Okay, but I'm going with you," Kala decided.

Her mother shook her head. "No way. The guy runs on kryptonite. If he _does_ show back up, you need to be far away. Your father, too. I might have to call in a couple favors, but as it so happens, someone owes me one."

…

In Gotham City, Oracle was still uncomfortably aware of her debt to Lois, but it was subsumed beneath an overwhelming frustration. "What do you mean, she's missing? I didn't have Spoiler on the roster tonight."

"Spoiler doesn't always respect the roster," Red Robin said. "She was in the riot with us, but I lost track of her. Have you got any trace technology on her?"

"Of course," Oracle said, and activated it. Two senses, one in the belt, one in the cowl of her Spoiler costume. They both reported in within minutes, and she gave Tim the address. Despite having that information, she also initiated a scan of her cameras' data for the night in the area of the riot. With a little luck, she would see what happened to Stephanie and have more info for Tim before he caught up with her.

Babs sat back and rubbed her eyes. Steph was so _different_ from the rest of them, so earnest and so … happy, in a weird way. She'd had a life that was no less operatically tragic than the rest of Gotham's capes, in its own ways, but somehow she was getting through it without hardening her heart. Babs admired her for that.

_And I never told her._ She shoved the thought aside. This was no time for maundering. Steph might be hurt, so Babs alerted Dr. Leslie Thompkins. And then she contacted Batman. "B, this is O. Spoiler went off-line. R is proceeding to her signal location now. Assistance may be required."

The first thing that really, truly frightened her was the way he answered her call. "When did Robin leave?" he asked of himself in a muttering tone that chilled her spine.

"What's going on?" she asked sharply.

"Things that can wait. I'm en route. Do _not_ notify Wing."

"Affirmative," she responded, shaking her head slightly at the typical Bat non-answer. Of course they were keeping this from Dick for right now, so he wouldn't bolt out into the middle of it with ribs broken. Babs had had many a reason to be angry with her ex, but that didn't change the fact that she still loved him. It was a different kind of love, not the excited-fluttery-heart kind, but a deep and abiding affection and concern for one another. That might've surprised some people.

Some people—all right, a lot of people—thought of her as a cold-hearted bitch. Babs was unsurprised by it. She was too intelligent to pretend otherwise, and she'd never had a great deal of tolerance for willful stupidity. She had even less after being shot and paralyzed. It had taken months to get her life back on track, to get her home completely re-fitted and everything else, and during that time she'd not only turned down Bruce's charity, she'd closed herself off from everyone in Batclan. They would've wanted to help her, and during those months of grief and frustration, she couldn't stand all the kind offers of assistance. At least when she let them back into her life, she _had_ a life. She'd completely reinvented herself, and refused to let anyone peak behind the metaphorical curtain while the renovations were going on.

From that, she understood Stephanie's determination. Babs had needed every ounce of tenacity in her soul to remake herself as Oracle. The girl had to've had a lot of it, too, to go back to Spoiler after Batman fired her. But stubborn will could be a problem in the field. Just look at Jason Todd….

The thought of him made Babs glance at the bottom of her screen. No alerts showed there. She was still tracing him, but he'd gone off-grid again, and it was anyone's guess where he and Rose would show up next. Babs was trying to piece together what she could on Red Coin, but it was proving difficult.

Tim came back on the comm then, his voice panicky. "Her kit's here, but she isn't. Oracle, do you have _anything_ else on her? Any kind of lead?"

She swore under her breath. "Momentarily. I also have B en route to you." At least the video feeds from the cameras were coming in. She glanced through them swiftly, searching for any sign of Spoiler.

When Babs finally found something, though, her heart dropped. _Sionis is still in prison, so why are his bully-boys surrounding her?_ Even as she thought it, she was querying Blackgate's records. What she found had her swearing again.


	34. Update

**If you're gotten this far, it's fair to say that this fic is currently on hiatus. That said, we have not abandoned it. There's actually quite a bit written, but had to be set aside for the moment due to 'Across the Universe' demand. We will pick it back up again in the near-future. Considering the over 50,000 words of work we have in this section of the 'verse already, we'd better. There's at least one rather epic pairing that demands it. And the pair of them demand it loudly. And one of them with a bazooka.  
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**Just give us time. The Little Secrets universe will return. Somehow, it always does. ;)  
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